Keynote Speakers
in alphabetic order
Julia Amann
Department of Health Sciences and Technology ETH ZürichResearch Group, ETH Zürich
Dr Amann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Health Ethics and Policy Lab based at ETH Zürich. Her research focuses on the impact of digital health technologies on the doctor-patient relationship and individual health practices. In her latest work, Dr Amann investigates the opportunities and challenges of medical AI as part of the H2020 Project Precise4Q. With her research, she seeks to promote critical reflection on the use of digital health technologies to foster inclusive, accessible, and empathetic healthcare.
Before joining ETH, Dr Amann held a postdoctoral appointment at Swiss Paraplegic Research, where she led a co-design project aimed at developing a self-management app for people with spinal cord injury. In 2018, she completed her PhD in Health Sciences and Health Policy at the University of Lucerne with a dissertation on patient-driven innovation. Dr Amann is also part of the research committee of the International Association for Communication in Healthcare and co-leads the Technologies for Public Health special interest group of the Swiss Society for Public Health.
Ethics of AI in healthcare: On the importance of asking the right questions
Hardly a day goes by without a scientific publication hailing the potential of AI to solve the world’s most pressing challenges, or conversely, demonizing AI. In healthcare, questions concerning patient safety and quality of care have taken center stage in this discourse. How can we ensure that medical AI contributes to individual and population health instead of amplifying existing challenges and health disparities? How can we safeguard core ethical principles that should guide public health and medical decision-making? And what are the roles and responsibilities of AI researchers and developers in this process?
This talk will provide a brief introduction to bioethics and zoom in on some of the most widely debated issues of AI ethics in healthcare, including privacy, fairness (bias), and explainability. Drawing on practical examples, it will illustrate how ethical frameworks can be useful tools to guide decision-making in practice. Most importantly, this talk aims to raise students’ awareness about the importance of asking the right questions, considering multiple perspectives, and challenging one's own assumptions now and again.
Horst Hahn
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine, Fraunhofer MEVIS, Bremen
Professor Hahn's scientific and technological work addresses the digital transformation of medicine on the basis of multidisciplinary data integration and modern machine learning methods. The consistent focus on quantification, consistency, and automation in medical imaging as well as the best possible use of all available information form the basis for a new generation of clinical decision support systems and predictive tools for an improved early detection, differential diagnosis, and therapy optimization of cancer and neurological diseases. In face of the rapidly advancing specialization of modern medicine with ever-increasing amounts of data and at the same time increasing cost pressure in the overall health system, his research aims at a sustained increase in efficiency and at the same time raising the quality and safety of both diagnostic and therapeutic processes.
Petra Lucht
Chair of Gender in STEM and Urban and Regional Planning. Feminist Studies in Science, Technology and Society (Feminist STS), TU Berlin
Prof. Dr Petra Lucht
holds the Chair of Gender in STEM and Urban and Regional Planning/Feminist Studies in Science, Technology and Society (Feminist STS) at the Center for interdisciplinary female and gender studies (ZIFG). The orientation of this newly established Chair at the Technische Universität of Berlin, introduced in 2017, is unique in the German context. Inter- and transdisciplinary approaches in gender studies are brought together with a broad range of subjects and paradigms in STEM and Urban and Regional Planning Sciences. The reference to Feminist Studies in Science, Technology and Society aims at research with socially relevant contents and applications.
Prof. Lucht holds a diploma in Physics and a phd degree in Sociology.
Transdisziplinary Gender Research in the Context of Computer Science and Digitalisation
The talk will first outline a research programme for gender research on science, technology, and society that includes perspectives of gender research on and in natural and technical sciences, theory-based research paradigms of gender research as well as transdisciplinary science.
Gender research on and in the natural and technical sciences encompasses three research perspectives: (1) research on professional cultures of expertise in STEM, (2) research on knowledge of gender in STEM, and (3) research on technological artefacts and innovations.
The theory-led research paradigms of gender studies are outlined as gender theories in motion; these include Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Intersectionality, New Materialism, Ecofeminism, and Postcolonial Studies.
Gender studies is thus not concerned with gender in the sense of a pre-existing entity, but examines gender as temporarily stabilised constructions of historical, social, and political processes.
Against this background, case studies from computer science will be presented in the second part of the talk. These case studies relate to the subject culture of computer science in studies and the profession as well as to basic research and fields of application of computer science, here in particular artificial intelligence and medicine. These case studies show how constructions of gender can shape both everyday knowledge and a technologised everyday practice. Teaching knowledge about constructions of gender configurations in graduate education in the natural and technical sciences enables research-based gender competences to come to bear in research and development.
Related work:
Lucht, Petra (2021). Transdisciplinary Research on ‘Gender’ in Science, Technology, and Society. In: Tanja Tajmel et al. (Eds.). The Human Rights Approach to STEM. Waxmann Verlag. S. 147 - 167. Open Access
Lucht, Petra (2018). Interventionen in Geschlechterpolitiken von Fachkulturen, Epistemen und Artefakten der Natur-, Technik- und Planungswissenschaften. Fallbeispiele aus der Lehrforschung. Open Gender Journal (2018). Open Access
Nassir Navab
Research Group Computer Aided Medical Procedures & Augmented Reality, TU Munich
Nassir Navab is a full professor and director of the Laboratories for Computer Aided Medical Procedures CAMP at Technical University of Munich (TUM) and an adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University with secondary faculty appointments at TUM’s Medical School. He is also the director of biannual Medical Augmented Reality school series at Balgrist Hospital in Zürich. He received the prestigious MICCAI Enduring Impact Award in 2021 and IEEE ISMAR 10 Years Lasting Impact Award in 2015. In 2001, while acting as distinguished member of technical staff at Siemens Corporate Research (SCR) in Princeton, he received the prestigious Siemens Inventor of the Year Award for the body of his work in interventional imaging. He also received the SMIT Technology Award in 2010. Before joining TUM in 2003, he had completed his PhD at INRIA and University of Paris XI in France and had enjoyed a two-years postdoctoral fellowship at MIT Media Laboratory before and nine years of industrial research experience at SCR. He is Fellow of the MICCAI Society and acted on its board of directors from 2007 to 2012 and from 2014 to 2017. He is also an IEEE Fellow 2022 and one of the founders of IEEE Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) and has been serving on its Steering Committee since 2001. He is the author of hundreds of peer reviewed scientific papers and 51 granted US and over 80 international patents. He served as General Chair for MICCAI 2015, ISMAR 2001, 2005 and 2014. He is a funding board member of IPCAI 2010-2021 and Area Chair for ICCV 2022 and ECCV 2020. He is on the editorial board of many international journals including IEEE TMI and MedIA. He is proud of his PhD students, who have received over 50 prestigious awards including MICCAI young investigator awards in 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 and best paper awards at IEEE ISMAR 2005 and 2017, MICCAI MedIA 2016 MICCAI IJCARS 2016 and 2019, IBM best paper award at VOEC-ICCV 2009, IPMI Erbsmann award in 2007 and best poster in 2019, and IPCAI best paper awards in 2014 and 2020. As of February 10, 2022, his papers have received over 49300 citations and enjoy an h-index of 100. His fields of interest include Robotic Imaging, Augmented Reality, Computer-Assisted Interventions, Computer Vision and Machine Learning.
Robotic Imaging, Machine Learning and Augmented Reality for Computer Assisted Interventions
In this talk, I will present an overview of our most recent advancements in Robotic Imaging, Machine Leaning and Medical Augmented Reality. I will first discuss the particular requirements for intra-operative imaging and visualization and present some of our latest results in intra-operative multimodal robotic imaging and its translation into clinical applications. To demonstrate the importance of virtual and augmented reality in the medical domain, I will review the first deployment of augmented reality into operating rooms in the last two decades and present some of our latest achievements in this field. I will then review the impact of recent research advancement in machine learning on medical imaging and computer assisted interventions and present the pioneering concept of multimodal semantic scene graphs, that we have recently introducing, for understanding, modelling and intelligent monitoring of surgical procedures.