The new year 2022 is kicked off in our science podcast "Hirn gehört: Oldenburger Wissensschnack" by Prof. Dr. Dirk A. Weyhe. Our guest is Professor of Visceral Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Oldenburg and Director of the university clinic of the same name at the PIUS Hospital Oldenburg.
His job as a surgeon includes complicated abdominal operations - liver, gall bladder, pancreas and colon. His passion as a researcher has become modern technologies in the operating theatre - VR glasses, augmented reality, HoloLens and shared experience. Both are linked by the topic of patient safety.

In the podcast, he talks about his biggest fail as a young Assistant physician (our funniest story yet!) and then raves about the many possibilities that modern technologies open up in the operation room. Weyhe introduces tools for simulating and training for surgeries, develops a virtual anatomy atlas for students and aims for even more individualised surgical treatment overall.

Sometimes he feels like he's on "Star Trek" - especially when he has a hologram of the patient's liver hovering over the operating table or invites an outside expert into the operating theatre as an avatar. Scientifically, his projects can be chalked up as pioneering achievements. In recognition, his clinic was certified as a "Centre of Excellence in Holomedicine" by the Holomedicine Association - a great honour for Oldenburg to join London, Singapore and Miami.

All in all, our guest provides a good feeling in the stomach - for patients and surgeons.
The new podcast episode can be heard on all the usual podcast platforms as well as at: www.hirnvomhahn.de/podcast

The biochemist and sensory physiologist Prof. David Julius and the molecular biologist Prof. Ardem Patapoutian have closed an important gap in sensory research.  The two scientists have researched the mechanisms of how we perceive pain, temperature and touch. For this, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded them in 2021 with the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. In announcing the two prize winners, the Nobel Committee spoke of "groundbreaking discoveries because the human ability to sense warmth, cold and touch is essential for survival and forms the basis for our interaction with the world around us".

The Board of the Research Centre for Neurosensory Science is very affected about the nomination of the Research Centre for the negative prize "Heart of Stone" of the association "Physicians against Animal Experiments" and would like to state the following: Our scientists behave ethically and make an important contribution to biomedical research at the University of Oldenburg. They do not deserve this "negative prize" and vehemently reject its acceptance.

All the facts about blackcap research can be found here (only in German): uol.de/fakten-moenchsgrasmuecke

An interdisciplinary team from the Universities of Oldenburg and Oxford (UK) has presented evidence that the magnetic sense of migratory birds, such as robins, is based on a specific light-sensitive protein in the eye. In the current issue of the journal Nature (Nature, Vol. 594, 24 June 2021), the researchers show that the protein cryptochrome 4, which is found in the retina of birds, is sensitive to magnetic fields and is thus most likely the magnetic sensor they are looking for.
First author Jingjing Xu, a PhD student in Prof. Dr. Henrik Mouritsen's research group at the University of Oldenburg, initially conducted all experiments in cell cultures; these could subsequently be confirmed by spectroscopic methods and simulations in collaborating research groups.

Read the full Nature article here: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03618-9

"My best move was to come to the University of Oldenburg"

In the fifth episode of the science podcast "Hirn gehört: Oldenburger Wissensschnack", Prof. Dr. Anja U. Bräuer, Professor of Anatomy at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, is our guest. She tells us how she came to do a doctorate in anatomy as a biotechnologist and started her academic career in this way. Before she finally became Director of Anatomy and Vice Dean of the Medical Faculty at the University of Oldenburg, she was first Junior Professor of Molecular Neurobiology at the Charité in Berlin and Professor of Anatomy at the University of Rostock.

Anja Bräuer is a good example of how an academic career can only be planned to a certain extent. Thanks to her curiosity and open-mindedness, she has taken on new tasks during her professional career and is now creatively helping to shape the development of Oldenburg University Hospital.

After the recording, everyone involved in the production agreed - this podcast episode really feels like an authentic "Oldenburg Schnack" and, in connection with Anja Bräuer's field of research, lives up to our name: "Hirn gehört - Oldenburger Wissensschnack".

The working group led by Prof. Tania Zieschang, Professor of Geriatrics and Director of the University Clinic for Geriatrics at Oldenburg Hospital and Chief Physician of the Clinic for Geriatrics at the Oldenburg Rehabilitation Centre, has obtained funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for a new major project. This involves the in-depth investigation of causes for falls in old age as well as the prediction of fall risks based on comprehensive data analysis of the statistical data of about 450 patients who are to be examined within the framework of the project and accompanied over several years.

The aim of the project is also to develop customised prevention programmes that can be tested in the future within the framework of a new falls clinic to be founded in Oldenburg.

In the fourth episode of the science podcast "Hirn gehört: Oldenburger Wissensschnack", Prof. Dr. Bernd T. Meyer, Professor of Communication Acoustics at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, will be the guest from 15 April 2021. He will talk about how he came to communication acoustics and automatic speech recognition as a physicist and computer scientist. He also discusses how complex and diverse language is as a research object. He also talks about the personal value of speech and speech signals in the era of Alexa, Siri and Ok Google. It's worth listening in again, because as a hearing researcher and member of the Neurosensorics Research Centre and the Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all", Bernd Meyer is a particularly interesting guest for our audio podcast "Hirn gehört: Oldenburger Wissensschnack".

And here is the link to the official press release of the university: www.presse.uni-oldenburg.de/mit/2021/049.html

The Nordwest-Zeitung (NWZ) also reported on the podcast episode with Bernd Meyer in its local section on 13 April 2021.

Audio-Podcast „Hirn gehört: Oldenburger Wissensschnack“ startet
Erste Sendung am 21. Januar 2021

Am 21.01.2021 startet der neue Wissenschafts-Podcast „Hirn gehört: Oldenburger Wissensschnack“, in dem Wissenschaftler_innen aus der Region über ihre Projekte, ihre Motivation, ihre beste Story, den größten Misserfolg oder ihr verrücktestes Lieblings-Fachwort „schnacken“. Die Moderation des Podcasts übernehmen Dr. Bianca Brüggen und Jens-Steffen Scherer, die auch den Oldenburger Science Slam moderieren. Koordiniert wird das Ganze aus dem Projekt „ReKuTe - Partizipative Wissenschaft für Region, Kultur und Technik“ an der Jade Hochschule.

Der Podcast erscheint immer am dritten Donnerstag eines Monats und den Auftakt macht am 21. Januar Prof. Dr. Ira Diethelm aus der Informatikdidaktik der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. Sie erzählt wie sie als Schülerin vom Informatikunterricht enttäuscht war und sich trotzdem weiter mit Themen der Informatik beschäftigte, Lehrerin für Mathematik, Chemie und Informatik wurde und schließlich beschloss eine akademische Laufbahn einzuschlagen. Auch über aktuelle Themen wird in der Folge gesprochen, zum Beispiel über Digitalisierung in Schulen.

Der Podcast wird auf der Webseite hirnvomhahn.de, den Webseiten der beteiligten Institutionen und über viele Podcast-Anbieter (wie z.B. spotify, podcast.de, deezer, Tuneln, fyyd, player.fm) veröffentlicht. Er ist ein Produkt des Projekts „Partizipative Wissenschaft für Region, Kultur, Technik“ der Jade Hochschule, welches von der Europäischen Union über EFRE-Mittel und „Europa für Niedersachsen“ gefördert wird.

The 5th Career Day Neuroscience gathered more than 150 participants on 29.03.2019, who wanted to find out about career fields in neuroscience and listened to the exciting presentations of the invited speakers. The organisational team of the 5th Career Day Neuroscience was pleased about so much interest and would like to thank all those who attended and supported the event.

Prof. Henrik Mouritsen, expert in the field of magnetoreception and member of the Research Centre Neurosensory Science, together with Prof. Peter Hore (Oxford), has been awarded a prestigious ERC Synergy Grant totalling around 8.6 million euros for the "QuantumBirds" project. The two experts and their working groups want to clarify in detail how birds perceive the Earth's magnetic field and thus answer one of the most exciting unanswered questions in biology, namely how birds' magnetic sense works.

For more informations: uol.de/news-detail/dem-magnetsinn-auf-der-spur-2894/

The hearing researchers at the University of Oldenburg, many of whom are members of the Research Centre Neurosensory Science, will continue to receive funding for the next seven years as part of the Excellence Strategy. They have a total of 55 million Euros at their disposal, which they will use to realise the research projects in the Cluster of Excellence application "Hearing4all: Medicine, Basic Research and Engineering Solutions for Personalised Hearing Care".

For more informations: hearing4all.eu/DE/

At the New Year's Reception of the University and the University Society Oldenburg on January 19, 2017, three personalities who have rendered outstanding services to the establishment of the European Medical School Oldenburg-Groningen (EMS) were awarded the President's Honorary Badge:
Prof. Dr. Djordje Lazovic, Director of the University Clinic for Orthopedics and Traumatology at the Pius-Hospital Oldenburg, was dean of studies in the founding deanery from 2012 to 2015,
Prof. Dr. Hans-Rudolf Raab, Director of the Department of General and Visceral Surgery at the Klinikum Oldenburg, and Prof. Dr. med. Reto Weiler, Oldenburg neurobiologist and rector of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Delmenhorst, were members of the founding committee and from 2012 to 2016 were deputies in the founding deanery of the Faculty VI.

In particular, Reto Weiler and Hans-Rudolf Raab have made a significant contribution to integrating the science professorships into the new Faculty of Medicine and - together with the three Oldenburg hospitals and the Karl Jaspers Clinic in Bad Zwischenahn - the "Medical Campus University of Oldenburg ", Said University President Prof. Dr. med. Dr. Hans Michael Piper.

The Minister of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony, Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić, honored 14 personalities from universities in Lower Saxony on November 17, 2016 in Hannover with the Lower Saxony 2016 Science Award.

The prize for junior researchers, endowed with 20,000 euros, went to Prof. Dr. med. Sarah Verhulst from the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Prof. Verhulst holds a junior professorship at the Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all" and is involved in the development of diagnostic methods for studying the function of the hearing system, among other things.

Find the official press release of the ministry for science and culture here.