Theses

Masters and Bachelors theses and research internships

If you are interested in a Masters or Bachelor thesis project or a research internship (Forschungspraxis) in our group we are happy to propose a concrete problem related to our current interests. Our group focuses on machine learning and optimization, deep learning for inverse problems, and DNA data storage and DNA information technologies. To get an idea about our current research, please check out our recent papers at google scholar. Projects usually involve a mixture of theory and applied work and require strong interest documented by excellent grades in relevant subjects such as linear algebra, probability and statistics, machine learning, signal processing, optimization, or related courses.

Below is a list of open topics. If you are interested in one of the projects, please send an email directly to the superviser and cc reinhard.heckel@tum.de. Include your transcript of records from TUM and your curriculum vitae and the planned start and end dates.

The list of topics is sometimes incomplete, and we are also happy to propose other topics if there is a good fit. If you are interested in a topic related to our current interests that is not listed below, please reach out to reinhard.heckel@tum.de and again include your transcript of records and CV.

External projects: If you are planning to carry our our project externally, for example at a company or another university, and you want us to supervise the project, please send an email to reinhard.heckel@tum.de including the name and contact of the exernal supervisor, your transcipt of records and CV, and a project description and an explanation how the project is related to our expertise. We can only supervise external projects if they are related to our expertise and current research interests.

Thesis and project administration and logistics: Here are some guidelines on the thesis and research project administration and on the grading.

Open projects

Deep learning based fetal magnetocardiography system

We are looking for a Master’s student to work on deep learning based reconstruction for a fetal magnetocardiography system, in a interdisciplinary collaboration with Prof. Fierlinger and Prof. Wacker-Gussmann. The goal of the thesis is to develop deep learning based signal reconstruction techniques for this new medical imaging and sensing technology.
Supervisor: Reinhard Heckel (reinhard.heckel@tum.de)
Prerequisites: Strong coding skills, specially in pytorch. A good understanding of deep learning for inverse problems.
Type of project: Masters thesis

 

Exploring a Network Architecture for Accelerated Diffusion Models

We are looking for a Master's student to contribute to a project focused on optimizing the speed of diffusion models through the design of the network architecture. While diffusion models have achieved remarkable success in image generation, their computational inefficiency remains a challenge. Your task will be to test a novel neural network architecture as a core component of these models, with the goal of enhancing their processing speed without compromising quality. To learn more about the project, please contact Youssef Mansour.
Supervisor: Youssef Mansour (y.mansour@tum.de)
Prerequisites: Strong coding skills, especially in PyTorch. A solid understanding of deep learning frameworks and generative modeling techniques.
Type of project: Forschungspraxis/ Research Internship
 

Leveraging Foundation Models for Image Restoration

We are looking for a Master's student to work on enhancing image restoration techniques using priors from foundation models. Foundation models, pre-trained on vast datasets, have shown immense potential in transferring knowledge to a wide range of tasks. Your role will involve integrating these models into restoration pipelines, evaluating their performance, and exploring ways to optimize their contributions to image quality. This project offers an opportunity to advance the state of the art in image restoration by utilizing large-scale pre-trained models. To learn more about the project, please contact Youssef Mansour.
Supervisor: Youssef Mansour (y.mansour@tum.de)
Prerequisites: Strong coding skills, especially in PyTorch. A solid understanding of deep learning frameworks and image restoration techniques.
Type of project: Master's thesis

 

Investigating and fixing inverse crimes in 3D CT reconstruction

We are looking for a Master’s student to investigate potential inverse crimes committed in deep learning research for computer tomography (CT) reconstruction. The goal is to understand and quantify the extent of which using synthetic measurement data leads to missleading results, and to work towards using real medical measurement data when evaluating methods for clinical use.
Supervisor: Anselm Krainovic (anselm.krainovic@tum.de)
Prerequisites: Good coding skills, specifically in pytorch, and a good understanding of deep learning for inverse problems.
Type of project: Master thesis

 

Robust fine-tuning of deep learning models for accelerated MRI reconstruction

We’re looking for a Master’s student to explore robust fine-tuning strategies for pre-trained deep learning models for accelerated MRI. While fine-tuning improves performance on the target dataset, it sacrifices robustness to out-of-distribution data. This project aims to better understand fine-tuning for image reconstruction and in particular accelerated MRI with the goal of proposing robust fine-tuning methods for accelerated MRI.
Supervisor: Kang Lin (ka.lin@tum.de)
Prerequisites: Strong coding skills with PyTorch. A good understanding of deep learning frameworks.
Type of project: Reserach Internship (Forschungspraxis)

 

Current and past theses in the group

Jakub Dvorak, ``Simultaneous Self Supervised Image Denoising and Deconvolution’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, ongoing

Oliver Kovacs, ``Developing a VarNet for DeepDeWedge’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, ongoing

Serdar Caglar, ``Test time training for denoising distribution shifts’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2024

Andreas Faika, ``Comparison of Tokenizers for LLMs’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2024

Raimundo Parra, ``Unintentional Bilingualism in Large Language Models’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2024

Mamdouh Aljoud, ``Filtering techniques in next generation multimodal datasets’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Cheng Yan, ``Meta-Learning for mulit-task MRI reconstruction’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Francesco Bollero, ``Data pruning for image reconstruction’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Faidra Patsatzi, ``Randomized smoothing for inverse problems’’, Bachelor's thesis, 2023

Xiaodong Lei, ``Adversarial robustness of deblurring methods’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2023

Dogukan Atik, ``Scaling laws for self-supervised image denoising’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Mamdouh Aljoud, ``Deep networks for nanopore basecalling’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2023

Rafael Vorländer, ``Reimplementing CryoGAN’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2023

Juan Cao, ``Uncertainty quantification methods for compressed sensing’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2023

Litao Li, ``Datawork for accelerated MRI’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Guang Chai, ``Evaluating deep-learning based imaging systems’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Johannes Kunz, ``Generative models for Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging’’, Master's thesis, 2023

Ali Can, ``Understanding the Contribution of Training Samples on a Prediction of a Single Test Image in a Denoising Task Using Attention Mechanism’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2022

Deniz Uysal,  ``Spectral Computed Tomography Image Reconstruction’’, Master's thesis, 2022

Xuyang Zhong, ``Self-Supervised Learning for Image Denoising’’, Master's thesis, 2022

Johannes Kunz, ``Dynamic MRI reconstruction’’, Project/Forschungspraxis, 2022

Weixing Wang, ``Graph neural networks for clustering and aligning DNA sequences for DNA storage'', Project/Forschungspraxis, 2022

Yundi Zhang, ``Coordinate-based image priors'', Master's thesis, 2022.

Samuel Eadie, ``Rate-Distortion Stochastic Autoencoding for Robust Representation Learning and Out-of-Distribution Detection'' (carried out at Bosch Research), Master's thesis, 2022

Kang Lin, ``Transformers for image recovery'', Master's thesis, 2021.

Frederik Fraaz, ``Image recovery with invertible neural networks'', Master's thesis, 2021.

Youssef Mansour, ``Neural network architectures for image recovery and denoising'', Master's thesis, 2021.

Benedikt Böck, ``Multiplicative filter networks for image processing applications'', Project/Forschungspraxis, 2021

Mohamed Ketata,  ``Data standardisation, multi-domain learning, and artifact robustness for improved MRI'', Bachelor's thesis, 2021.

Deniz Uysal, ``A simple encoder and decoder for DNA data storage with Polar codes'', Project/Forschungspraxis, 2021.

Yundi Zhang, ``Deep matrix decoder for collaborative filtering'', Project/Forschungspraxis, 2021.

Youssef Mansour, ``Ensembles of image reconstruction method for MRI'', Project/Forschungspraxis, 2021.

Jacob Geussen, ``Diffusion MRI denoising with neural networks'', Bachelor's thesis, 2020.

Lena Heidemann, ``FastMRI with untrained neural networks'', Master's thesis, 2020.

Tobit Klug, ``Image separation with untrained neural networks'', Master's thesis, 2020.

Oleksii Khakhlyuk, ``Convolutional neural networks with fixed kernels'', Bachelor's thesis, 2019. 

Zi Yang, ``Probabilistic matching networks for few-shot learning'', Master's thesis, 2019.