Climate change, health, education: 12 researchers start their DIZH Fellowships
For the fifth time, DIZH Fellowships have been awarded to outstanding ZHAW researchers who wish to work on digital transformation projects in a research cluster.
Since the first call in 2019, 44 fellows have been selected. The 12 new fellows will start their projects in January 2024 and are working on various topics:
AI and climate change
David Jaggi from the School of Management and Law is examining company publications and patent texts in order to develop a method to identify greenwashing using natural language processing and machine learning.
Alice Aubert from the School of Life Sciences and Facility Management is investigating the benefit of a digital tool for participatory decision making. The tool will allow citizens to share how they address trade-offs of sustainable developments. "The DIZH Fellowship brings to life a software that was until now developed and tested in experimental conditions," says Aubert.
Pasquale Cirillo from the School of Management and Law wants to use machine learning to provide industry and regulatory authorities with reliable tools for climate-related financial risks. "Fighting climate change requires huge amounts of money. Our goal is to help financial markets do their part, by offering a more reliable quantification of potential financial losses due to climate change," he says.
Education and academic writing
Christian Rapp, from the School of Management and Law, will look at teaching academic writing and align it with new AI technologies.
Next to Christian Rapp, also Malgorzata Anna Ulasik from the School of Applied Linguistics has a project about AI and texts. She will compare text production with and without text generators to identify best practices.
Health
Michelle Haas, from the School of Health Sciences, will build on a recently completed project in which the ZHAW and ZHdK developed an exergame for the rehabilitation of cruciate ligament injuries, will deepen the knowledge and validate other important aspects.
Sven Hirsch from the School of Life Sciences and Facility Management is researching the concept of the digital twin in healthcare to virtually recreate patient-specific pathophysiological systems.
Further information on the fellowship program and the other funded fellows (Michael Jüttler, Florian Spychiger, Andrea Günster, Andreas Schönborn and Yulia Sandamirskaya) can be found on the ZHAW digital website.