Last updates: August 21, 2019
My name is Lüder Alexander Kahrs. If you do not have a key with double dots above the u on your computer, you can write my first name Lueder. I was born and raised in Bremen, Germany. I am married to Jessica Burgner-Kahrs.
My research is centred around computer and robot assisted medical diagnosis and interventions. I especially enjoy challenges in the research field of medical technology, that address optical, cognitive or manipulative limits of physicians. For example, sub-surface anatomical or pathological structures might be difficult to see, perceive and reach. In dynamic scenarios, this applies in a spatial and temporal sense. Computer vision combined with manual-guided instruments like endoscopes or robotic manipulators will help to solve these challenges towards autonomous diagnosis and interventions.
I am affiliated with the Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences and conducting research in the area of assistive technologies for medical diagnosis and interventions.
The Department of Computer Science granted me a membership on the Associate level. I am serving as examiner on Master and doctoral thesis committees.
Most of my time, I am conducting research in the Centre for Image Guided Innovation and Therapeutic Intervention (CIGITI) at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). I develop methods to assist physicians by means of computer vision and novel instruments like robotic tools or custom-build endoscopes.
In my role as Head of Research Group "Medical Technology and Image Processing" as well as Head of Work Group "Rapid Prototyping for Implants", I was promoted as state offical (German term: Akademischer Rat).
Inside the Lower Saxony Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Implant Research and Development (NIFE) in Hannover, Germany, I was heading the lab and work group for Rapid Prototyping for Implants. My main task was getting the lab up and running, writing an infrastructure grant (Stratasys Objet500 Connex3 and XORAN xCAT) as well as initiating collaboration.
I was supervising a group of research assistants and students towards their doctoral, Master's and Bachelor's degree. I was co-examiner of more than 20 theses. Further on, I was responsible for writing research grants and acquisition of other means of funding for this group with a total amount of over 4M Euro and more than 700k Euro for me as principal investigator.
The German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) granted me a postdoctoral fellowship for research abroad, including a return grant for choosing the next host institution inside Germany. The fellowship was conducted at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, U.S. and Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. The fellowship had the goal to investigate camera techniques and methods of control to guide a cochlear implant inside the inner ear.
I was Research Fellow with the Computer-Assisted Otologic Surgery (CAOS) lab and the Department for Otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States. The work was centered around my fellowship from the German Research Foundation as well as endoscopic exploration and measurements for the Percutaneous Cochlear Implantation.
In my role as postdoc at the University Hospital Düsseldorf, Germany, I was initiating engineering research projects at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology. Research and grant applications were driven by the goal of multi-port access inside the temporal bone. The effort result in the successful funding of the DFG Research Unit MUKNO.
I was a full-time employed research assistant while I was working on my doctoral thesis and further projects. I was member of the Medical Robotics Group at the Institute for Process Control and Robotics at the Universität Karlsruhe (TH). I was mainly involved in three research projects: i) Projector-based Augmented Reality, ii) Cognition in Sports and iii) Laser bone ablation.
I was coaching several teams that partook at national level championships and won gold and silver medals (e.g. single scull, double scull, coxless four).
As freelancer at the Olbers Planetarium Bremen, I was presenting the actual starry sky and was involved in showing the kids program.
I received my Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften (engineering doctoral degree) from the Department of Informatics at Universität Karlsruhe (TH), now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). I combined computer vision methods with laser bone ablation to control a cochleostomy. One of the major achievements was, that I introduced a planning and simulation step to ideally distribute ablation craters of a pulsed laser. The shape of the removed bone was measured with a confocal microscope and the simulation was compared with real executions. My doctoral thesis is written in German and can be bought or downloaded here.
I studied physics with emphasis in solid state physics and applied optics. Common ground of both and my specialisation was laser physics. Studying towards the German degree Diplom includes courses that are undergraduate and graduate level. The Diplom combines the Bachelor and Master of Science.
