Four works that were awarded the “Karl-Heinz Lust Innovation Prize” from the “Foundation for Research, Innovation and Transfer” at the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen (THM), which were awarded for the second time, deal with the transferability of artificial intelligence into economic activity. Philipp Petermeier, Renke Hohl, Ketut Adnyana and Nils Schäfer will each receive 1000 euros for their theses, which were rated “very good”.
THMPresident Prof. Dr. Matthias Willems thanked the Lust family of entrepreneurs for the prize money in memory of the founder and innovator Karl-Heinz Lust, who passed away in 2009. As a successful entrepreneur and engineer, he had always been a supporter of THM . His name, he said, is synonymous with the creative spirit that is often lacking today – but which is precisely what the young award winners represent. Host Dr. Wolfgang Lust also placed the intellectual achievements of the award recipients on a par with those of his father. "He would have been thrilled to see your work," he said. Moderator Prof. Heinz Kraus thanked Volksbank Mittelhessen and the Rotary Club Wetzlar for their support.
The reviewers, acting as presenters, gave a brief and entertaining introduction to the award-winning works and their authors:
Business Information Systems student Philipp Petermeier focused his bachelor's thesis on deep reinforcement learning, i.e., the application of AI to the intraday electricity market. Based on the premise that the decentralization of electricity production goes hand in hand with its democratization, he developed automated trading models designed to enable the most cost-effective energy supply for society as a whole. Prof. Dr. Nicolas Stein from the Department of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Data Processing at THM in Friedberg, who delivered the laudatory speech, emphasized the exceptional level of innovation and the excellent scientific depth of the work.
Renke Hohl wrote his master's thesis at the Department of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Computer Science on plant growth modeling using deep learning. The background to this work is the increasing spread of ragwort, which is highly toxic to livestock and must be manually removed from pastures. Fully autonomous, machine-based removal of the plants at an early growth stage is conceivable, but is hampered, among other things, by insufficient data to train recognition software. However, this data can also be artificially generated in Hohl's model. Prof. Dr. Diethelm Bienhaus, speaking on behalf of Prof. Dr. Eghbal Ghobadi, emphasized that this work sets a benchmark in the field of image-based modeling.
Ketut Adnyana, who earned a Bachelor's degree in Bandung, Indonesia, and two Master's degrees from TU Dortmund and TU Darmstadt, followed by a Master of Business Administration from THM Business School, focused his thesis on the "Impact of AI Technology (ChatGPT) in Increasing Programmeming Efficiency." His work demonstrates that ChatGPT, by simplifying code generation, supporting real-time debugging, and documenting code, is an effective tool for improving productivity and shortening the learning curve for programmemers. In his laudatory speech, Prof. Dr. Gerrit Sames emphasized the high relevance of this topic for all mechanical engineering companies with customized products. As a sign of appreciation for his achievement, the Indonesian Consul General in Frankfurt, Antonius Yudi Triantoro, traveled to Frankfurt to attend the presentation.
Nils Schäfer submitted a master's thesis at the Department of Civil Engineering on "Data-Driven Pre-Dimensioning: Graph Neural Networks in Reinforced Concrete Design"—also an application of AI. Pre-dimensioning in structural engineering is considered a manual, experience-based process that depends heavily on the engineer's skills. Schäfer trained a neural network that could be used with a very high accuracy of over 96 percent—offering a significant time advantage compared to manual pre-dimensioning of reinforced concrete structures. His work fills a research gap in civil engineering. Prof. Dr. Joaquín Diaz praised the impressive depth and quality of the work.
In addition, the foundation awarded two scholarships, providing €500 per month to Ilona Leinweber (Goethe School Wetzlar) and Josefine Weber (Liebig School Giessen for their first year of studies. Besides their excellent academic performance, the students impressed the jury with their social commitment and the passion for natural sciences evident in their applications.