EU project

The Research Campus STIMULATE is promoted within the initiative „Saxony-Anhalt WISSENSCHAFT Schwerpunkte“ - from the European Structural and Investment Funds (EFRE) - until the end of 2022. For the next 7 years, these funds will be used to strengthen the Research Campus STIMULATE both thematic content-related and structural and to enhance in particular as well as to organize the exploitation and the transfer of the results.

STIMULATE pursues the following objectives:

• Promotion and enhancement of skills in the field of medical engineering, especially in the field of image-guided minimally invasive procedures to build a nationally and internationally recognized reference center which can be summarized in the vision of a „German Center for image-guided medicine“ in the research and teaching location Magdeburg.
• Specific strengthening and expansion of structures for the Research Campus STIMULATE with the aim to create a modern and competitive research infrastructure.
• Induction of settlements and spin-outs resulting in the creation of new jobs as well as the binding of eminent scientists within Saxony-Anhalt. An active promotion of gender equality in all relevant fields of activity is pursued.
• Knowledge base/expertise preservation and expansion in all relevant medical-technical research fields in Magdeburg through the promotion of young scientists.
• Promotion of professional education and training to secure specialists.
• Consolidation as well as promotion of interdisciplinary cooperation between doctors and engineers as a prerequisite for the development of innovative medical technology products or processes with high practical relevance.
• Strengthening of the leading market health and medicine in Saxony-Anhalt.
• Innovation strengthening in the field of medical engineering.
• Transfer of scientific knowledge into the economy and condition creation for the implementation of spin-offs and settlements.

In Research Campus STIMULATE’s project - focus on medical engineering - the resources of the European Structural and Investment Funds are used for the following measures:

To usefully complement the research fields processed in STIMULATE, new fields of application are opened up. The contents of the fields of, for example, cardiology, thoracic surgery, urology and ENT are paramount. Regular OVGU internal calls for projects are made whose thematic orientations are in STIMULATE‘s research agenda, i.e. the image-guided minimally-invasive diagnosis and therapy methods.

The selection of the research projects is done on the basis of short proposals which are reviewed by Research Campus STIMULATE’s board according to a transparent set of criteria. Specifically, projects on the following topics will be worked on within the next 2 years:

• Illustrative visualization techniques in the operating room,
• medical information systems for intraoperative visualization and user interaction,
• MRI-based local temperature determination in the brain,
• virtual simulation of the deformation behaviour of NiTi stents in minimally-invasive vascular therapy,
• patient-specific treatment optimization of intracranial aneurysms considering vessel wall deformations,
• diagnosis optimization of infected metal implants through computer tomography,
• innovative robot moving interventional CT,
• ultrasound visualization during interventional procedures on the tricuspid valve,
• health economic accompanying research.

As part of the thematic enlargement, the Research Campus research and laboratory infrastructure is also complemented.

In addition to the direct research funding, measures will be funded which serve the further development and expansion of STIMULATE’s transfer activities. As part of the provided funds, the Research Campus action framework will be expanded and made more flexible in this area. The aim is to generate economic effects in Saxony-Anhalt and to tap new sources of income in order to independently bear a part of the transfer costs in perspective. This is, in the long term, intended not only to support the financing of the research activities, but also for the perpetuation of STIMULATE.

To support the research work, superior activities are suppported within the scope of a central project. Other agents are also used for national and international networking and the establishment and perpetuation of cooperations in Research Campus STIMULATE’s scientific and economic field.