Dissertation projects at DEM

The SCC DEM department is looking for dedicated PhD students to explore new methods, technologies and software to capture, manage and analyse data collections and their metadata from many different application areas, such as the humanities and cultural studies or the nanosciences and materials sciences.

Contact: Danah Tonne, Thomas Jejkal, Rainer Stotzka

Student theses at DEM

Our department offers student thesis (bachelor and master informatics, other areas possible by arrangement) and student assistant job opportunities that deeply integrated into our current research and development. The focus is often on the prototypical conception and development of methods and applications that address concrete requirements and challenges in the research projects. This usually involves working with real data and close collaboration in the team. For a selection of exemplary topics of recent theses see down below.

The available topics range from new technologies for research data management to work with research data from individual disciplines such as the materials sciences or the humanities. They provide the general framework for possible student work in our department. If an area arouses your interest, please contact the indicated contact persons to arrange specific topics. Please send general enquiries to Rainer Stotzka.

Area I: New technologies for research data management

Metadata are used to describe research data in such a way that they can be found by other researchers and are comprehensible for subsequent use. Metadata stores information about administration and creation of the data as well as results of data analysis and their cross-references. These informations enable (semi-)automatic generation of new knowledge, thus opening up a whole new field of data and information science yet to be explored.

The Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration aims to to make research data discoverable, reproducible and reusable through the qualitative enrichment of metadata. This effort has been motivated by the large amount of unique research data generated in the various Helmholtz Centres,  which is valuable for cross-disciplinary re-use. Therefore, documenting the data by enriching it with standardised and meaningful metadata is essential for its comprehensibility, traceability and re-use. Examples are the correlation of climate data with the spread of diseases or the joint exploration of historical documents by researchers in the humanities and materials science. New methods, software and services are being developed in SCC DEM, which form the technical basis of the platform.

Topics

• Analysis of research processes in regards to existing and required metadata
• Automated acquisition of metadata
• Implementation of international standards as part of the HMC services portfolio
• Supporting the integration of developed services into research processes
• Design and implementation of an XML based metadata editor
• Development of tools to assist researchers in use of metadata

Programming languages and technologies

Java, Python, Javascript, Spring Boot

Language

German or English

Contact

Thomas Jejkal, Sabrine Chelbi

Area II: Research data in nanotechnology and materials science

The NFFA (Nanoscience Foundries and Fine Analysis) - Europe Pilot (NEP) is a European project involving 23 partners. It sets out a platform to carry out comprehensive projects for multidisciplinary research at the nanoscale, extending from synthesis and nanocharacterization to theory and numerical simulation.

SCC DEM is responsible for setting up the metadata management, ensuring the interoperability of all NEP results and to establish a unique open access archive of  nanoscience data. Furthermore, SCC DEM will develop methods for visual exploitation of research data and will provide virtual access to new data analysis tools. All these tasks will be worked on in close collaboration with international partners, offering fascinating insights in groundbreaking research in the field of nanoscience.

Topics

• Development of an interface for the acquisition of nanoscience instrumental metadata
• Identification and integration of a common description format for scientific metadata coming from data analysis
• Research on Visual Exploitation methods for metadata (content exploitation, search, discoverability)
• Development of analysis services for magnetic resonance data (image reconstruction, contrast extraction and prediction, nuclear spectra database creation)

Programming languages and technologies

Java, Python

Language

English

Contact

Rossella Aversa

Area III: Research data in (digital) humanities

SCC DEM ensures/ensured sustainable storage of research data in a data repository as part of the information infrastructure project of two DFG Collaborative Research Centers (CRCs); It also enables daily digital research work and innovative data exploitation. The CRC Metaphors of Religion at Ruhr University Bochum conducts multidisciplinary research into the significance of metaphors for religious meaning-making. Investigations cover a variety of religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism and Daoism), regions of origin (Europe, the Near and Middle East, South, Central and East Asia) and a long historical period (3000 BC to the present day). The CRC Episteme in Motion was a humanities research network at the FU Berlin that brought together a variety of so-called 'small disciplines' (Egyptology, Greek Studies, Arabic Studies, etc.) to investigate the history of human knowledge from antiquity to the early modern period.

The BMBF project Materialized Holiness studies Torah scrolls as an extraordinary codicological, theological and social phenomenon. The project focuses on the analysis of letter decorations and the decoding of their use and meaning from the perspective of Jewish studies, materials science and computer science. With the help of digital text and image annotation, scholars are tracing a fascinating practice of writing while developing new methods and models for researching historical textual sources.

The projects in area III offer exciting insights into interdisciplinary research and development between computer science and the humanities and into the field of the so-called Digital Humanities.

Topics

Research data (image data, text data, metadata) in humanities disciplines and its ...

• data modelling and storage
• algorithmic enhancement and extraction of information
• quantitative data analysis
• data viz
• integration in research practices (digital annotation, controlled vocabularies/ontologies)

Programming languages and technologies

Java, Python, Javascript, Semantic Web Technologies (RDF, SKOS, Web Annotations)

Language

German or English

Contact

Danah Tonne

Completed and ongoing theses (selection)

• A Software Library for Research Data Packaging and Exchange (BA)
• Algorithmic Methods for Stemmatological Analysis of Ancient Egyptian Literature (BA)
• Aufbau, Integration und Evaluierung eines Metadatenstandardkatalogs als Teil einer Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (BA)
• Capturing the logic in Aristotelian diagrams (BA)
• Design and Evaluation of a Versioning Method for a Data Repository (MA)
• Design, Implementierung und Evaluierung eines Web-Editors für Research Object Crates (BA)
• Design und Implementierung eines XML-basierten Metadaten-Editors (BA)
• Distanzmetriken zur Analyse der Seitenlayouts historischer Handschriften (MA)
• Enabling Handling of Dynamic Metadata using Web Annotation Data Model (MA)
• Entwurf und Implementierung einer generischen Webkomponente zur Darstellung hierarchischer Metadaten (BA)
• Evaluation of Ontology Matching Algorithms and ML-Based Enhancements for the Humanities (BA)
• Extensible Metadata-Web-Editor for Linked Data (BA)
• Visualization and Analysis of Illustration Reuse in 16^th Century Printed Books (BA)