Science Podcast: Key To My Research

#1

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Is Gender The Key To Health? – Prof. Dr. Birgit Derntl

Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research a podcast from the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast we explain how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives in a simple way.

My name is Jennifer, and I'm your host.

In today's episode, we get to know Professor Birgit Derntl.

Prof. Derntl:
We know more actually about the flora of the seas, we know more about erectile dysfunction, we know more of many other things than we know about women's mental health.

Host:
She is specialized in Women's Mental Health and Brain Function. Women make up about half of the world's population. But what happens to women when we ignore them in research? And what does that have to do with men's mental health? Find out now.

Prof Derntl:
I really love science on women because I am a woman. And so I guess that is also what I want to convey and what I want to tell also all of the doctoral researchers everybody I'm working with. I hope that everybody feels well the way they are in their individual way.

Host:
Individualized treatment for everyone. That is the goal of Professor Derntl's research. To achieve this, she studies the mental health of women, transgender and non-binary people. Until now, research has focused almost exclusively on the male gender.
But there are gender-specific differences.

Prof. Derntl:
The risk for certain mental disorders that women and men face. And yes, we do know that there are different prevalence rates. So the risk is way higher, for example, for a woman to be diagnosed with depression, it's twice, actually. Then for a man versus, we have different disorders like autism, which is higher in men than in women. So the risk to be diagnosed with a certain mental disorder, we know that there are sex differences. We know about these sex differences actually for decades because the data hasn't changed, and the data hasn't changed globally.

Host:
This means that scientists all over the world can see these differences in prevalence but still cannot fully explain them. But there are some hypotheses:

Prof. Derntl:
And one of them of course comes with, well, women and men may be raised differently. So the expectations for women and men are different. And then we talk probably more about gender differences. So what are the roles that women and men have to fulfill in society and how we are raised? The others are more biological theories that we have, for example, sex hormones, because women undergo, or most females actually undergo a menstrual cycle.
It's only 0.5% that has been dedicated to women's mental health of our research. So we know more actually about the flora of the seas. We know more about erectile dysfunction. We know more of many other things than we know about women's mental health. Most of the data that we have relies on male and on male animals. So that is kind of hard to infer what will happen to a woman if she takes the antidepressant or the antipsychotic or whatever medication we talk about. So we need to get together to collect data and to inform the women about their mental health and also their risks for mental health.

Host:
One of these risks is postpartum depression, which occurs a few weeks after giving birth. Studies show that about 10 to 15 percent of women develop this type of depression. Another risk is premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). This is a depressive disorder that occurs before menstruation and causes symptoms of anxiety or mood swings. The incidence is approximately 2-5 percent.
It is not only in the case of mental disorders that treatment errors can occur due to gender-specific differences. Problems can also arise from medication.
For example, there is an Alzheimer's drug called Lecanemab. It is particularly effective in white men. But not in women or black men.
These are just a few examples that confirm and drive forward Professor Derntl's work.

Prof. Derntl:
I think it's a strong indication for me to move on and to put our effort here to really kind of collaborate with everybody. But it's also something where I'm happy that we are kind of trying to fill the gap. So we are providing data right now. And we also have now an international research training group here in Tübingen, which is really a wonderful thing because now 12 doctoral researchers all work in the direction of women's mental health, contributing different data to this in collaboration with Swedish colleagues. And I think this is the future of looking at aspects together, looking into aspects and really learning from each other. And then also discuss what is needed as a next project, as a next step, and how the data that we gather translate into mental health care.

Host:
For Professor Derntl, the University of Tübingen is a good place to do research. The University Hospital has a high level of expertise and great potential when it comes to the treatment of women. It ranks fourth in the world in the field of gynecology. Professor Derntl’s research area - Women's Mental Health & Brain Function, is therefore a sensible and important addition. But she also values the work at the University Hospital in other ways:

Prof. Derntl:
It's a very nice and a wonderful atmosphere that we have here in Tübingen. And I guess one of the benefits of being such a small university town is that everybody is close by. You can actually meet with everybody, and we can exchange. And the communication and the collaboration between the colleagues is super and is really excellent. I guess that is what motivates and what gives Tübingen such a special atmosphere that we want to collaborate because we have to, it's so small and everybody's nearby. And we do then collaborate. And this is really perfect.

Host:
Professor Derntl focuses on women's mental health. This includes among other things the menstrual cycle, birth control and the menopause. There are a lot of things going on in a woman's brain that, as we have heard, are largely unexplored. What we know today is, that the hormones for the menstrual cycle affect brain activation, brain function, and also mood symptoms. But:

Prof. Derntl:
We don't know a lot about what's happening when it comes to hormonal contraception and social effective behavior, for example. So that's what I'm interested in, emotions, mood and empathy. So we did some studies in these regards. And yes, there seem to be effects there. But there's also a group of women who tolerate contraception very, very well. (...) And there is a group of women who do not tolerate it. And it's still we do not know how to identify those that tolerate it versus those who do not tolerate it before they actually start taking oral contraception or use any other hormonal contraception method.

Host:
The situation is similar concerning for the transition to menopause. Again, the data areis far too sparse.

Prof. Derntl:
We investigate the menopausal transition, the perimenopause, as it's called, as the state between, as when you transfer, actually. (...) And I mean, this period is super interesting, but again, we don't have much data. And if I now tell you that the duration of the perimenopause is four years, but it could actually be two to eight years, (...) and we don't know which individual will face a two-year transition versus who are those that actually transition for several years and even longer, and what will be the symptoms like? Because a third of the women transitioning, they won't have a lot of symptoms. They will transition and it will be all right. Third will have symptoms and they will suffer. And another third will have severe symptoms. So, this is actually also where we don't know who are the individuals who will have the less symptoms or will have more symptoms. We don't know. And of course, there are some theories that we are now working on, maybe some hormone-sensitive women, so that there's a subgroup of women who are particularly sensitive to hormonal transitions, which also shows when they start taking oral contraceptives, for example, or when they've been pregnant, so that they particularly respond to those hormonal influences. But that could also be then for the menopause transition, but we are not sure about this.

Host:
So we can see that something needs to change quickly so that all to treat all genders are treated equally.

Prof. Derntl:
If we stick to the old days, half of the population will be neglected. Half of the population will be misdiagnosed and will probably also suffer from the consequences in terms of treatment. And so that's for the women. And if we talk about trans and non-binary, I think it's the same what's happening there. There will be a group of people, a group of individuals who will not get the right treatment for their condition.

Host:
Professor Derntl is driven by the hope of individual treatment for everyone. But not only that. Her research also has a personal impact on herself.

Prof. Derntl:
I'm way more aware of monthly changes that I'm undergoing now because of all the research we are doing. And it's a wonderful topic actually to be working in. And I so much love the exchange and the openness that I have with colleagues.
I do not share here on the podcast what topics we are addressing at certain meetings, but they are very informative and very psycho-educational. So absolutely necessary to be open about this. And I guess that's a wonderful group and a wonderful group of colleagues, but also a wonderful group of doctoral researchers that we have here who really embrace the topic in all its facets and levels.

Host:
But it takes more than just a good research group. According to Professor Derntl, there are many ways to bring more attention to her field of research. Among other things, awareness campaigns and more research funding are needed:

Prof. Derntl:
And here we talk about a lot of funding. So this is not something where we have a single project, but we really need federal money to go into this and to really invest into mental health. I think if we get together and if we exchange, (...) that's really, really helpful because we may have borders, but actually women live everywhere. And if we improve healthcare for women, we also improve it for men. And that normally sells the point. And if I say, well, it is of relevance to half of the population, but actually it's of relevance for the whole population, because if you can think of a tailored treatment for women, then you can also say, well, then there must also be a tailored treatment for men, right? Because if the one group is served individually, the others will as well because we have tested it then. So I guess that's also where we could speed up is saying, everybody is concerned. So let's get together and do something.

Host:
This was: Key To My Research, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the whole interview with professor Derntl. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.
Special thanks to: Professor Birgit Derntl, Laura Rothgang, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#2

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Can Plants Beat Climate Stress? – Prof. Dr. Eric Kemen

Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, and I’m your host.   

In todays episode, we will get to know Professor Eric Kemen.


Prof. Kemen:
Our main goal in general is to figure out what does it mean for a plant to become robust.

Host:
He researches Microbial Interactions in Plant Ecosystems at the Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and Infection Medicine in Tübingen. And he is researching Microbial Interactions in Plant Ecosystems.

Here is an example:   
Prolonged periods of drought or flooding cause entire harvests to fail because our crops cannot survive them. But nature quickly turns green again after such extreme conditions. Why is that?

Prof. Kemen:
Key to my research is for sure to understand from an ecological point of view where plants are growing, how they are growing, what are the environmental factors, and to go down from these ecological aspects to the individual genes and how they function.
So that is also what motivates me all the time to do my work. It's really that the way of understanding how on the really small scale we can understand how this basically translates later on in an ecological or agricultural context.

Host:
Before becoming a professor, Eric Kemen would have liked to have worked in agriculture and become a farmer.

Prof. Kemen:
I would have probably become a more organic farming person. So I was always interested in alternative farming, so where you basically don't use a lot of agrochemicals, but where you basically use more the natural resources that exist in order to build up your farm. So that would have been my idea. But of course it's not easy if you don't come from a farm to become a farmer and to get land to do this, actually. So this then had to be an idea and stayed very theoretical.

Host:
Perhaps as theoretical as his research is today. Professor Kemen and his team are doing basic research. Their goal is to be able to apply their science to agriculture one day. But for now, it remains at a theoretical level.

Prof. Kemen:
Our main goal in general is to figure out what does it mean for a plant to become robust. So what does it mean if you stand out there, and you suddenly have sun that burns down like hell and basically their temperature increases to 60 degrees because the ground gets hot to 70 degrees and the plant has to stay. And then during the night it suddenly drops or in winter it drops really below zero and so on. But still the plant basically stays, and we have not really a good idea what this robustness is and how we can basically change it or adapt it.

Host:
The big question is, how do we get back the resilience of wild plants while maintaining the yield of our agricultural crops?

Prof. Kemen:
One has to be aware that we have to feed more and more people on the earth. So basically we cannot really risk that we are producing less. So we really have to see that we get this plant robust by learning something from the nature. 

It's very difficult to really breed in all these genes with classical breeding in the real time that we need with these genes because we are already seeing that we have very harsh conditions for our plants that I mean most people have really faced already this year and will face also during the summer really extreme temperature, extreme hot, extreme water. And of course there the plants need to adapt, and we need to find a way how to really get this to the agriculture very quickly.

Host:
What Professor Kemen means is that it is much easier to work with so-called transgenes or genetically modified plants. The use of genetic engineering in agriculture is controversial. The German Environment Ministry warns of herbicide resistance. Professor Kemen understands the criticism. He says that if the manipulation is done in a safe environment, just by introducing specific genes into the plant, it can help achieve faster results and be more resilient in the face of climate change.  According to Professor Kemen, time is running.

Prof. Kemen:
I think it's the timeline within the next 10 years that we really have to find what makes the plants robust. So what makes them really survive in nature. And then we have to get this as quickly as possible into the crops that they become really robust.

Host:
That is why the University of Tübingen is the right place. Professor Kemen says it is the perfect combination of disciplines that makes this university so unique.

Prof. Kemen:
Here the plant research is really a focus. So there we are in one big institute where we are only looking at plant research. And we also are associated with ecology, for example, that also has a big part looking into plant. And this is really a center for plant science. And of course, this is a big advantage if you have colleagues nearby that all work on plants and all different aspects. And this is, I think, one of the unique sites where you have such a focus that so many groups work with the same interest on the same topic. And for me, it was also interesting to come here and very important because it's not only plant sciences, but we also have a very strong microbiology. And within this microbiology, the microbiome is one of the hot topics and the main topics they are focusing on. And as I'm part also of the microbiology, this is making the perfect environment where one can study on one side the plant, one can study the micro, and one can really bring this together with the ecology to study how plants interact with their environment to really survive these harsh conditions.

Host:
And for Professor Kemen, this little town has a lot more to offer than that.

Prof. Kemen:
What I really like about Tübingen is that first of all, it's an extremely international city. So it's a very small city. And usually small cities in Germany are not so international, but Tübingen is completely different. And for me personally, I think what is important is that it's really embedded in natural reserve, like the Schönbuch, which is a huge forest area, which is really natural. And it's really fantastic to go out there and spend days because you can just walk from Tübingen outside, and you can walk for hours and hours and hours just through nature.

Host:
Professor Kemen enjoys sharing this experience with his family. Together they enjoy going into the woods and observing what he calls spectacular nature.

Prof. Kemen:
I don't know if that is of a scientist, but we are the whole family, my kids and my wife, we are very much interested in plants in general. So we are very fascinated by the diversity that is out there. And of course, we want to know which plants are there if we don't know them and try to identify them together. And of course, we are also, since I'm also into microbiology, we are very fascinated by the diseases the plants have. This might sound a bit strange, but there's such a diversity of microbes. You can basically see if you look closer at the plant. So they are, for example, rust fungi, and they make fantastic structures where they release their spores in the environment. And you can see them on the plant. They are very colorful. So there are orange spores, red spores, brown spores, and so on. And this we as a family like very much also to look into those pathogens. Of course, what you find always are a lot of mildew that are outside there. And just seeing by a naked eye how fantastic the diversity is that is out there. And the fantastic thing is also you have all these pathogens there. The plants are still all very healthy. So, and that is, of course, fascinating looking out there in nature. And of course, what we usually have with us is a small pocket microscope. So we usually also try to look closer into insects and whatever we see there, and how the structure also look on the microscopical level to get an idea of what we really find out because these are just fantastic structures. If you look in the microscope and it's so fascinating what nature is generating there.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes below. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Kemen. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.


Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis. 
Special thanks to: Professor Eric Kemen, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald. 

 My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#3

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
How Does AI Effect Our Everday Lifes? – Prof. Dr. Christoph Bareither


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen. In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, and I am your host.

In today’s episode, we get to know Professor Christoph Bareither.

Prof. Bareither:
What we are trying to do, is to contribute to a future in which we make better decisions about how to live together with artificial intelligence.

Host:
He is a professor for cultural anthropology with a focus on digital anthropology at the University of Tübingen and the director of Ludwig-Uhland-Institute for empirical cultural studies. His research and teaching focuses on the ethnographic study of everyday digital cultures. His work aims to contribute to urgent sociopolitical debates by highlighting how digital technologies transform everyday practices and experiences.

Prof. Bareither:
My research in a nutshell is trying to find out how people use digital technologies to shape and live their everyday lives, but also how these technologies come in with their own affordances and their own agency to shape these everyday lives in return. And we are trying to look at both things at once to create basic knowledge which we can use to better understand our digital societies.

Host:
Let's look at specific topics.
Professor Bareither and his team are working on:
• the transformation of everyday culture through artificial intelligence,
cultures of memory,
• cultural heritage and museums,
• as well as social media and digital image cultures.

One of the projects Professor Bareither is focusing on is the use of generative AI at the university.

Prof. Bareither:
What do students and researchers actually do with AI right now? How do they use it? And how does it change the way they create and work with knowledge? And this is what we call hybrid epistemic practices. So epistemic practices, basically knowledge practices that are hybrid in the sense that humans and AI systems come together to create and shape knowledge or learn about it and so on.

But the interesting thing was that there is really not a lot of research, especially qualitative and ethnographic research on what actually happens on the ground.

Host:
That's why Professor Bareither and his team are now conducting ethnographic research to find out how people use Generative AI. To get an overview, they started with a survey of around 500 people at the University of Tübingen.

Prof. Bareither:
So the big fear at the University was, oh god, now all the students will write all their assignments with generative AI, researchers will just create articles with generative AI and so on. And our survey finding was that's actually the least frequent thing.

Host:
Here are some examples of what most participants to the small survey said they were using generative AI for:
• as an alternative to google,
• as a help for brainstorming,
• as a source of inspiration,
• to discover new ideas
• or to help overcome writer’s block.

Prof. Bareither:
It's also interesting, of course, there were critical reflections of how AI shapes our everyday life at the university, It's this problem of a potentially uncritical adaption of AI-generated output. And this question of temptation, right? It's so easy to use, and it's actually not good and most students see it's not, the results are not so great if you use it to generate text, but it has this temptation, especially when the pressure is on, and you have to deliver and so on that people are tempted to use it anyway. And this temptation is now there, it's in the room, right? And so people struggle with that. And we just started, as I said, but we want to explore these, and we will also feed them back into the university. I'm also part of a working group that is responsible for developing basically the politics of the university and ideas and guidelines for teaching and research and so on. And we are feeding these insights also back into this working group and not only, but also of course into the research area on AI and science.

Host:
Professor Bareither and his team are now conducting in-depth interviews with a range of people. The goal is to really dig into this issue and explore how Generative AI is changing the way people study and work at the University of Tübingen.

Another important area of research in Professor Bareither's field is called: Curating Digital Images. Here, he and his team are trying to understand how the impact of social media affects how teenagers and adolescents perceive images of the human body. According to Professor Bareither's research, about 60 percent of teenagers and adolescents in Germany use Instagram or TikTok several times a week.


Prof. Bareither:
What they see is structured by recommender algorithms. And recommender algorithms today are mostly based on AI systems, right? And these are black boxes, so we don't exactly know how they work. The companies try to be more transparent about it, but you only get like bits and pieces of information about how they work. And we know they have quite a big impact. So what we look at in this project specifically is normative beauty standards. So how bodies are stereotypically represented in a lot of social media posts, and then the question, what will algorithms and recommender algorithms play in reproducing these bodily stereotypes, you know, these typical norms of beauty?

Host:
To achieve this, Professor Bareither and his team are combining modern and traditional methods.

Prof. Bareither:
We have basically young people who use social media so-and-so many hours a week, and then they create field nodes and diaries that we then use for our analysis combined with interviews with them to better understand how it is for them to live on, you know, everyday lives with these platforms and with their algorithms that present a certain kind of body image to them on a daily basis.

Host:
Understanding what happens to us when we use social media is the goal of this type of research.

Prof. Bareither:
So what we are trying to study is how people perceive bodily beauty through these social media feeds, and how this shapes how they experience bodies of other people on Instagram and offline, and also their own bodies. How does that shape the way they perceive bodily beauty and body beauty standards?

Host:
While there is a big question mark over how exactly the algorithms of major social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram work, Professor Bareither does know the following:

Prof. Bareither:
What we know is that both platforms collect what they call signals from users. These could be, you know, something you like or some an account you follow and so on, but it would also, especially on TikTok, be simply how long you look at a particular video, right? And it already records the length, and then it uses it basically to create a profile of what you like, right? And what it does then is at least TikTok, that is how it's TikTok CEO once explained it, is to use AI based pattern recognition process, which basically means the way he explains it is, okay, we know that person A likes one, two, three, and we know a person B that likes one, two, three, and four. So we figure four is also likeable for person A. So what this AI based system does, it actually creates a network of taste, a network of aesthetic preferences, right? And uses this network. So it basically incorporates the tastes of all people using the platform and builds aesthetic relationships and taste relationships between them to figure out what someone likes and then uses this to provide someone else what this person potentially likes.

Host:
So people are getting content that they didn't even know they liked. And it seems to work really well. That is one of the reasons why TikTok is so popular right now. With all his research, Professor Bareither has a noble goal.

Prof. Bareither:
What we are trying to do, my teams and I, is to contribute in a nutshell to a future in which we make better decisions about how to live together with artificial intelligence.

Host:
And for Professor Bareither, there is no better place to do his research, than Tübingen. For example, there is the so-called Cyber Valley. Europe's largest research consortium in the field of artificial intelligence. The institute where Professor Bareither works is called the Ludwig Uhland Institute.

Prof. Bareither:
Well, our Institute is special in several ways. It has a very difficult history that's connected to national socialism, but it was also since the 1960s, a very extremely progressive Institute participated in the building up of culture and apology in Germany and played quite a significant role. So it has a very interesting and complex history, and it's a small department now with three professorships, but a really good one, I think. And we have different areas of expertise. And what makes this Institute special is that we all share a lot of responsibilities, but also research interests. And we have several projects where we collaborate, where we closely work together. And this is the same for teaching, that we really try and work together to create interesting teaching programs for students. And then also the place, of course, we are on the castle in Tübingen. So everyone is welcome to visit us someday. If you go into the castle, and you walk up the stairs, then you see like a little house, and it really looks like out of a Grimm's fairy tale, you know. But if you go in, it's actually not a house, it's a tower, and it goes down into the castle with our own library and interesting furniture, which has to do with its history. But come and see for yourself.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a Podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes. There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Bareither. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis.
Special thanks to: Professor Christoph Bareither, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#4

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
How Smart are Tumors? - Prof. Dr. Dr. Ghazaleh Tabatabai


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research - the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen.

In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, I’m your host and in today's episode we meet Professor Ghazaleh Tabatabai.

Prof. Tabatabai:
We deal with tumor diseases that have learned to escape from therapy.

Host:
She is a Professor of Neurology and Neuro-Oncology at the University of Tübingen.
And she is the Chair of the Department of Neurology and Interdiscipinary Neuro-Oncology at the University Hospital Tübingen. Her research work focuses on brain tumors.

Prof. Tabatabai:
The key to my research is contributing as much as we can in our team to push boundaries. We want to improve therapeutic strategies for patients with brain tumors. And what we want to find out by our research is whether there are any specific vulnerabilities that these tumors have at certain stage of the development or during therapy that we can exploit again therapeutically to design combination therapies.

Host:
All of this is done in clinical as well as wet lab projects.
A wet lab, or an experimental lab, is a laboraty designed to work with experimental methods from molecular biology using for example cell culture and other experimental models.

Prof. Tabatabai:
We deal with tumor diseases that have learned to escape from therapy. So whatever therapy you apply, somehow these tumor cells are smart enough to find a way to survive anyway. But there is a certain window of opportunity where they have not yet found this escape route. And we really want to define where is this window of opportunity and how to exploit that and what really shapes this window of opportunity.

Host:
One of the most recent projects that Professor Tabatabai has been working on is:

Prof. Tabatabai:
We have a glioma model where we know that specific pathways contribute to the disease. Or you know that during treatment, specific pathways are involved. Then we go ahead and apply this treatment and then watch how these tumor cells change during this treatment. This is something that we do using functional genomics. So we have a specific workflow that we established in our lab to dynamically watch how these tumor cells change during this application of specific therapies.

Host:
As director, Professor Tabatabai has to keep track of the research in her field. What makes the work at the University Hospital in Tübingen so unique: it hosts the only oncological cluster of excellence in Germany, IFIT: which stands for Image-guided and Functionally Instructed Tumor Therapies.

Prof. Tabatabai:
For iFIT, the main feature is here to really combine world-class expertise from three different research areas to create synergy and then basically catalyze different research projects that address relevant questions.

Host:
These three research areas would be:
A: Functional Target Identification and Molecular Tumor Therapies
B: Immunotherapies, and
C: Molecular and functional multiparametric imaging

Prof. Tabatabai:
And if you now look at a circle covering area A, B and C you have the unique vision of having molecular therapies plus immunotherapies plus a method to visualize all the relevant molecular events. And we see in all the projects that had been conducted in the first funding period so far that actually really the synergy of these three areas this is the key to really push that forward and this is something that is absolutely unique to the University of Tübingen because having synergies in all these three areas is required and this is something that we can really work on here, and we can really design these projects with all these different principal investigators that are involved in iFIT.

Host:
Neurologist, physician-scientist and director. Today, Professor Tabatabai benefits from all the expertise she gained during her education and training. What has guided her along the way, and what she would like to share with young students at the beginning of their careers:

Prof. Tabatabai:
A certain way of self-management, a certain way of discipline, or really having the right mindset or attitude in a specific situation. Of course, this is nothing that you are born with. It's a muscle that you need to train and train and train again. And there is no universal recipe to it, right? If you're only in rooms where you feel you are the smartest in the room, you are definitely in the wrong rooms, in my opinion. So you have to go out of your comfort zone, and you have to look for new topics and also new areas of growth.

Host:
For Professor Tabatabai, growth remains an important part of her work. And the iFIT cluster is the perfect place to do that.

Prof. Tabatabai:
This principle of, you know, if you are the smartest in the room, then you are in the wrong room in the cluster initiative. You definitely, and if you are in the right cluster, right, you definitely, you are never the smartest in the room because whenever, I mean, if you think of three different research areas, you cannot be a world expert in all of these, right? So it's per definition that you always see, okay, so this, I didn't even know, or this, I don't even understand. So there are sometimes also scenarios where you, in the beginning, think, what is this? And then you go after it and then learn about it, and then you study and also, as you say, so really fall in line with these principles.

Host:
As mentioned earlier, Tübingen plays an important role for Professor Tabatabai because of the unique cluster at the University Hospital. But there is more to Tübingen than that.

Prof. Tabatabai:
I think what helps is that Tübingen as a city is, of course, quite small. So every, its distances are so short, it makes, of course, also the private life much easier. So my daughter is just 10 minutes going from home to school, right? And it's not like having a 50-minute drive somewhere. And also for going to colleagues at different institutes, you can just walk, right? And meet. And I think this is also a very unique feature that it's fantastic. Yeah, and I could not right now imagine really that there are a lot of other places that combine on one hand, you know, the specific topics that I'm passionate about in my research, and this would be on neuroscience and oncology. These are at a very high level in Tübingen and, of course, the clusters. And in addition, this working culture. I think this makes this place very unique.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes.

There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Tabatabai.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends & collegues.

Authors: Chris Veit and, Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Ghazaleh Tabatabai, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer and I’m your host. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

#5

KEY TO MY RESEARCH
Do Objects Party Alone? – Prof. Dr. Dorothee Kimmich


Host:
Welcome to Key To My Research - the science podcast by the Excellence Strategy at the University of Tübingen.
In this podcast, we explain in a simple way how outstanding scientists are researching complex topics that affect our everyday lives.

My name is Jennifer, I’m your host and in today's episode we meet Professor Dorothee Kimmich.

Prof. Kimmich:
People feel more and more invaded by objects and things become more and more dangerous also.

Host:
She is a Professor for Literary cultural studies and cultural theory in the German department of the University of Tübingen. And she focuses on the meaning of things in literature and the concept of similarities.

Stay tuned to learn about the significance of things in modern and postmodern literature and why they are more important than you might think.

Prof. Kimmich:
You have lots of novels or short stories where adults and not children are confronted with objects that talk, that run around, and they want to live with you. There's a very nice short story about an Austrian author, and he tells, "Every time I come home I knock a little bit on my door to tell the objects and the things in the room that they can go back to their places where I put them when I left my home so that I'm not too scared and everything is in order. But I do know that when I'm absent all these kinds of objects have fun, and they play around.” So he's telling about how he's convinced that objects have a certain kind of life.

Host:
According to Professor Kimmich, there can be several reasons for this phenomenon. One of them is the meaning that things take on when we spend time with them or live with them.

Prof. Kimmich:
When I'm talking about conviviality, do I think about only human beings or also animals, plants, things? And how are things part of the little cosmos I'm living in? Do I use them only or do I accept that there is something I have to take care for?

Host:
What Professor Kimmich means is that for us humans, things are special in many ways. This becomes clearer when we look at art and literature. But why is this so? And how did Professor Kimmich come up with these ideas? To understand this, we have to go back to the 80s. Kimmich began her studies in Tübingen and then went to Paris for about a year where she had world-famous teachers like the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Prof. Kimmich:
I came from Tübingen and the first two weeks I had to change my clothes, the whole habit. I started smoking because this was very important. In the 80s there were Foucault still in Paris and giving lectures. And we could attend all kinds of super lectures with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault. And this was kind of a turning point in my study career but also in the style I would say, in the style of thinking. And when I came back to Tübingen, it was quite difficult to re-adapt to not only a small town but also different kinds of discussions and thinking.

Host:
After Professor Kimmich returned from Paris, she also realized that things seem to play a big role in modern literature. And there are several reasons why this surprised her:

Prof. Kimmich:
At the first glance you would say: "That has no room in modern literature!” Because we know that things are material and material is dead. So this is the definition. And if you are a person who believes in living material, maybe you are esoteric or a little bit crazy even a child.

Host:
Professor Kimmich’s research lies inbetween literature and philosophy. She says that her niche of thinking and teaching touches history, philosophy and all kinds of arts. And she finds it all in literature.

Prof. Kimmich:
I think it's the only “zone”, you might call it, where you can recognize or even feel how deep art and literature is, how deep it is part of our everyday life and our narrations, our discourses, our habits and our behavior. Because it's part of our history, our biography and the kind of thinking we would develop. And this is: How do you want to live? Normally you don't think that you need art to do that, and you don't think that you need philosophy. But if you combine it with history and philosophy and art you know this is the ambit you are living in.

Host:
A key factor for Professor Kimmich in this context is the power of imagination. As we have heard, this is something that children are usually good at. They actually believe in the realness of things. But also for adults, the power of imagination is something that may have brought us to where we are today.

Prof. Kimmich:
If you have no imagination, you can't survive. And it's the imaginary you live from, and you live for. And the imaginary is nourished by also memory and what you remember. And it's even in the brain it's quite near. The neurophysiologist that tells us that is kind of a capacity which combines the capacity to remember and memory. And you need to have imagination to have plans, to make plans, to decide. And if you have no imagination, you can't solve any problem.

Host:
In postmodern literature, the meaning of things changes.

Prof. Kimmich:
People feel more and more invaded by objects and things really. And the objects become more and more dangerous also. They are many, and they have become dangerous, and it's more difficult to be a friend of the objects you live with. And in modern literature this is kind of - to make it a little bit more theoretical - more interesting. Maybe it's contesting the divide between nature and culture and between the material and the non-material or the spirit and the material or the living and the dead. So, you would say human beings and even animals are living beings whereas all these kinds of things are dead material. And the divide between the dead and the living and the material and the spirit and nature and culture, these big divides what we invented more or less in the 19th or even starting in the 18th century is now contested. And not only contested by philosophy that comes much later only at the end of the 20th century, but it's contested by literature that you should rethink these kinds of categories and also this kind of ordering the world.

Host:
Let's go back from the theoretical approach to modern and postmodern literature x to the methods that Professor Kimmich and her team use for their research. It's very different from what scientists in biology, medicine, or even archaeology do.

Prof. Kimmich:
People in the humanities, my colleagues and I, we mostly work alone at home.
We have to exchange ideas and perspectives, theories and methods and to discuss the approaches, and we can also give hints but at the end, the reading and writing, we do it very alone.

Host:
There are many things, that Professor Kimmich appreciates about the University of Tübingen. One of them is:

Prof. Kimmich:
First, Tübingen is an interesting university because we have many many many many disciplines. We have specialists for Chinese culture and history, for Japanese history, we have this wonderful anthropologist department, we have a big history department, and we have many many other languages and cultures and many different kinds of historical departments or historical research, not of all parts of the world but all times of the world. And so we are very close to each other because Tübingen is so small, and you have many opportunities to work together and there is something, also what is quite, also I think an exception, that even with departments like the natural sciences or also medicine are also interested in our research, and we can talk to each other and cooperation is possible and this is a big chance here in Tübingen.

Host:
This was: “Key To My Research”, a podcast produced by changing time in cooperation with the University of Tübingen. For more information and links to the sources, see the show notes.

There you can also find a link to the hole interview with Professor Kimmich.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends.

Authors: Chris Veit and Joti Fotiadis.

Special thanks to: Professor Dorothee Kimmich, Heiko Heil, Oliver Häußler, Kurt Schneider and Oliver Lichtwald.

My name is Jennifer, Thanks for listening and see you next time.