AI for Cancer Diagnosis: UASTechnikum Wien and Medical University of Vienna Collaborate on New Doctoral Program
24 January, 2025
The focus of the FWF-funded program is on the diagnosis and analysis of gliomas, a specific type of brain tumor.
Gliomas are complex brain tumors that require individualized treatment. Imaging techniques such as MRI and PET have their limitations, both in diagnosis and in monitoring the course of treatment. Frequently, invasive procedures are needed to determine the tumor. This is the subject of the new collaborative doctoral program of the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
The CONGLIOMERATE (“Connecting Glioma Experts in Research and Teaching”) research project relies on artificial intelligence. Five doctoral students will work for four years on an interdisciplinary basis to improve diagnoses, analyze tumor properties and expand the database for AI models. In the course of this, young researchers will be trained and a sustainable interdisciplinary platform for innovative glioma research will be created.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
“We are contributing our expertise in the field of artificial intelligence, and MedUni Vienna is contributing medical expertise and extensive data, among other things,” says Isabel Dregely, head of the Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics competence field at the Faculty of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien. “The great thing about the project is the interdisciplinary collaboration. AI is very data-dependent and this collaboration gives us the opportunity to work on the problem together with the domain experts based on a large data set.”
“January 24 is International Day of Education. We are pleased to be able to present a multi-year collaboration between two major educational institutions on this day,” says Barbara Czak-Pobeheim, Managing Director of UAS Technikum Wien. ‘AI and data analytics are already an essential part of our expertise at our university,’ says Rector Sylvia Geyer. ”The doctoral program is an important step in further expanding our know-how in an application-oriented way.”
The plan is for three of the doctoral students to pursue their work at MedUni Vienna and two at FH Technikum Wien. “Networked glioma experts in research and teaching” is the motto of the program. The joint doctoral program, with mutual supervision by researchers from both universities, is expected to significantly advance research in this field. The doctoral positions are to be advertised in spring.
CONGLIOMERATE is one of three new doctoral programs presented at the end of 2024 in the FWF’s doc.funds.connect program and will receive 1.24 million euros in funding. It is the third doctoral program at the UAS Technikum Wien – following the Doctoral College for Resilient Embedded Systems funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research and the FWF-funded program MatureTissue, both with the TU Vienna as a partner.
Photo material: an example image from the data set can be found at https://cloud.technikum-wien.at/s/aofBy8kRnPPWgoG (Edited from DOI: 10.3390/cancers15102740, licensed under CC BY 4.0.)
