Team

Prof. Dr. Stefanie Speidel

Head of Department

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5413
Building/Room Number: H 136/3.136

Research topics:

Navigation System
Simulation & Data Generation
Surgical Training
Surgical Robotics
Surgical Workflow Analysis & Complication Prediction

>>>Publications

Ricarda Abdel-Bary

Administration

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building/Room Number: H136 / 3.137

Dr.-Ing. Zhaoyu Chen

Scientific Management

E-Mail
Phone: +49 (0)351 / 458 17233
Building/Room Number: H136 / 3.137

Dr. Sebastian Bodenstedt

Scientist, 
Deputy Head of Department, 
Group Leader of Data-driven Surgical Analytics and Robotics

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5598
Building/Room Number: H 136, 3.138

Research Topics:
Surgical Data Sciene
Machine Learning
Computer Vision
Surgical Scene Recognition
Robot-assisted Surgery

>>>Publications

Dr. Micha Pfeiffer

Scientist, 
Group Leader of CAN/Computer-assisted Navigation

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5596
Building/Room Number: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Soft-Tissue simulation
Non-Rigid Registration with Deep Learning
2D-3D Registration and Sim-to-Real applications
Intraoperative Translation, Regulation and Software Frameworks

Curriculum Vitae:
2016: Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, KIT, Karlsruhe
2017-2021: PhD Student at dkfz (NCT Dresden/TSO)
since 2021: Post-Doc at dkfz (NCT Dresden/TSO)

>>>Publications

Dr. med. Fiona Kolbinger

Clinician Scientist in Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 19624
Building/Room Number: H136 / 3.0G

Research Topics:
Surgical Data Science
Robot-assisted Surgery
Surgical Decision Support
Surgical Oncology
Clinical Translation

>>>Publications

Rayan Younis

Doctor in further training and clinician Scientist

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 17279
Building/Room Number: H136 / 3.0G

Research Topics:
Surgical Data Science
Surgical Workflow Recognition
Autonomous Surgical Robotics
Surgical Telepresence
Pre-Clinical Translation

Curriculum Vitae:
2017-2024: Medical Studies (MD) at Heidelberg University
2020-2024: MD student at the Departement of General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery, Heidelberg University Hospital
since 2025: Clinician Scientist at AI-based Assistance Systems in Surgery (VTG, Dresden)                                                                                                                                    since 2025: Surgical PhD student at dkfz (NCT Dresden)

>>>Publications (Google Scholar)
>>>Publications (ORCiD)

Johanna Meriel Brandenburg

Doctor in further training and clinician Scientist

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 98203
Building/Room Number: H136 / 3.0G

Research Topics:
Surgical Data Science
Computer Vision
AI-based Surgical Skill and Quality Assessment
Intraoperative Decision Support
Clinical Translation

Curriculum Vitae:
2017-2024: Medical Studies (MD) at Heidelberg University
2020-2025: MD student at the Departement of General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery, Heidelberg University Hospital
since 2025: Clinician Scientist at AI-based Assistance Systems in Surgery (VTG, Dresden)                                                                                                                                    since 2025: Surgical PhD student at dkfz (NCT Dresden)

>>>Publications (Google Scholar)
>>>Publications (ORCiD)

Maxime Fleury

Scientific Software Development

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building/Room Number: H136, 3. OG

Gregor Just

Scientific Software Development

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building/Room Number: H136, 3. OG

Peng Liu

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5597
Building/Room Number: H 136, 3.130

Research Topics:
Medical Image Registration for Middle Ear Diagnostics
Navigation System for Laparoscopic Liver Surgery

>>>Publications

Alexander Jenke

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5528
Building/Room Number: H 136, 3.138

Research Topics:
Active Learning (SurgOmics)
Surgical Scene Understanding
Segmentation

>>>Publications

Bianca Güttner

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5596
Building/Room Number: H 136/ 3.OG

Research Topics:
Soft Tissue Simulation
Training Data Generation
Integration of Model-driven and Data-driven approaches

Ariel Antonio Rodriguez Jimenez

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building/Room Number: H 136/3.OG

Research Topics:
Digital twin for assisted robotics tele-surgery

Johannes Bender

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5597
Building/Room Number: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Navigation in Laparascopic Prostatectomy
2D-3D-Registration
Online Adaptation and Labeling

Hanna Hoffmann

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5597
Building/Room Number: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Surgical Skill Assessment
Surgical/Medical Training

Current Projects:
6G-life (Link)
Surgical AI Hub (Link)                                                                                                                  virTUos - HybParc Sensorbasiertes Feedback (Link)

Curriculum Vitae
10/2015 - 04/2022: Diploma Mechatronics (specializations: Biomedical Engineering and Control Theory)
08/2018 - 05/2022: SHK Weise Software GmbH - Software Developer
since 08/2022: PhD Candidate at University Hospital Dresden (NCT Dresden, TSO)

>>>Publications 

Kevin Wang

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building/Room Number: H 136/3.OG

Research Topics:
Computer-Vision-based Force Estimation

Max Kirchner

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building/Room Number: H 136/ 3.OG

Research Topics:
Federated Learning
Foundation Models for Surgery
Medical Image and Video Analysis

Current Projects:
EU-Project: NearData (Link)
BMBF-Project: SurgicalAIHub Germany (Link)

Curriculum Vitae
10/2017 - 01/2023: Diplom-Ingenieur in Electrical Engineering at TU Dresden
09/2020 - 05/2021: Erasmus at Aalto University, Espoo, Finnland
since 02/2023: PhD Candidate at dkfz (NCT Dresden, TSO)

>>>Publications

Danush Kumar Venkatesh

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building/Room Number: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Data synthesis with generative models
Controllable video generation with diffusion models

Current Projects:
SECAI (Link)

Curriculum Vitae
04/2013 - 06/2017 : Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical), Anna University
10/2019 - 12/2022 : Master of Science (Computational Science), TU Bergakademie Freiberg
Since 01/2023 : PhD candidate at University Hospital Dresden (NCT Dresden/TSO)

>>>Publications

Jinjing Xu

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building/Room Number: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Learning Based Visual Localization
3D/4D Scene Reconstruction
Surgical Simutanous Localization and Mapping

Curriculum Vitae:
09/2015-06/2019: Bachelor in Hydraulic and Hydropower Engineering at Wuhan University
10/2019-10/2022: Master in Computational Modelling and Simulation at TU Dresden
since 04/2023: PhD Candidate at dkfz (NCT Dresden/TSO)

Susu Hu

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Graph-based and generative modeling of tissue analysis and molecular profiling
Multi-modal and multi-task deep learning frameworks for survival

Curriculum Vitae:
09/2009 - 06/2013: Bachelor in Logistics Engineering at Nanjing Agricultural University, China                                                                                                                                    10/2019 - 06/2023: Master in Computational Modeling and Simulation at TU Dresden
since 06/2023: PhD Candidate at University Hospital Dresden (NCT Dresden/TSO)

Martin Lelis

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Negative latency - network latency compensation for telesurgery 
Shared autonomy in robot assisted laparoscopy
Deep reinforcement and imitation learning for surgical tasks

Gregor Just

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:

Intraoperative interactive AI
Stream-based Active Learning
Online adaption and annotation

Claas de Boer

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Vision-Language Models in Surgery
Video Foundation Models in Surgery
Research Software for Surgical Data Science

Curriculum Vitae:
10/2016-09/2020 Bachelor in Computer Science, TU Dresden
10/2020-07/2024 Master in Computer Science, TU Dresden
since 09/2024: PhD Student, Universitätsklinikum Dresden (NCT Dresden/TCO)

Lorenzo Mazza

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Reinforcement Learning
Imitation Learning

Chenyang Li

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 5595
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Surgical scene understanding
Surgical SLAM

Curriculum Vitae:
09/2015 - 06/2019: Bachelor in Measurement & Control Technology and Instrumentation at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan)                                                10/2019 - 10/2021: Bachelor in Computer Science at RWTH Aachen University    11/2021 – 03/2024: Master in Biomedical Computing at Technical University of Munich  since 10/2024: PhD Candidate at University Hospital Dresden (NCT Dresden/TSO)

>>>Publications

Dominik Maier

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Soft Tissue Simulation
Training Data Generation

Current Projects:
SIMSURGE (Project Details)

Curriculum Vitae:
10/2019 - 09/2023:  Bachelor in Computer Science, HS Coburg 
10/2023 - 12/2025:  Master in Computational Modeling and Simulation, TU Dresden
since 01/2026:         PhD Candidate at dkfz (NCT Dresden/TSO)

Anneli Hummel

PhD Student

Email
Phone: +49 (0)351 458 15596
Building: H 136/3. OG

Research Topics:
Analysis of laparoscopic videos
Semantic segmentation of surgical scenes

Curriculum Vitae:
09/2017 – 07/2020: Apprenticeship as a Digital and Print Media Specialist, Penguin Random House Publishing Group, Munich
10/2020 – 11/2023: Bachelor’s degree in Media Informatics, TU Dresden
10/2023 – 12/2025: Master’s degree in Computer Science, TU Dresden
since 01/2026: PhD student, Dresden University Hospital (NCT Dresden/TSO)