91ŃÇÉ« graduate students Martin Barakov, Massimiliano Muci and Sepideh HajiHosseinKhani may have different focus points for their studies, but they will all pursue research in Germany this year as recipients of an academic exchange grant.
DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, is the world's largest funding organization for international academic exchange. Through its Research Grants program, it provides funding to support doctoral students and post-doctoral research at a German university.
For Barakov, a political science PhD candidate with a master’s degree from 91ŃÇÉ«, the funding will help enhance his dissertation via archival research and interviews with local residents. His thesis compares urban outcomes across 35 years of state socialism and 35 years of capitalism in the cities of Berlin, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria. He will be hosted at Humboldt University in Berlin, working in coordination with the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies. Following his time in Germany, he will do similar research in Sofia.
“I plan on visiting a variety of different archives specifically with the aim of understanding East German approaches to urban planning, as well as conducting interviews with local residents,” says Barakov.
Muci, also a political science PhD candidate, will be based at the Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy at the University of Potsdam for the first half of his time abroad, before relocating to the University of MĂĽnster. He will further his research on Marx and Marxism in Berlin by examining original sources related to the philosopher's doctoral dissertation at the University of Berlin from 1837-41, including letters from editors of a journal with which Marx collaborated.
“I'm looking at the origins of this conception of the world in the only philosophical work by Karl Marx – his dissertation with which he graduated at the University of Jena in 1841,” explains Muci, whose work is supervised by 91ŃÇÉ« Professor Marcello Musto. “I'm interested in broadening the genesis and I need the archives to do that.”
HajiHosseinKhani is a computer science graduate student with a master’s from 91ŃÇÉ«, which she earned following an undergraduate degree in her home country of Iran. She will be joining the Institute for Data Science, Cloud Computing and IT Security (IDACUS) at Furtwangen University for a project that will focus on developing a comprehensive decentralized finance dataset. The project will then develop a self-defending AI architecture that will resist adversarial attacks, with stress-testing of the model to follow.
“The goal of this project is that we want to design a secure transformer-based AI model to detect and mitigate the malicious activities in the decentralized finance sector,” says HajiHosseinKhani.
She notes this collaboration follows another that she participated in with the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Her supervisor, Professor Arash Habibi Lashkari, was also a DAAD scholar for his postdoc and helped HajiHosseinKhani design a collaboration with Professor Christopher Reich that saw her start at 91ŃÇɫ’s Behaviour-Centric Cybersecurity Center (BCCC), and finish the final seven months at IDACUS.
Political science Professor Heather MacRae is a DAAD ambassador at 91ŃÇÉ«. She is also Barakov’s supervisor and a past DAAD scholar who did graduate fieldwork at the University of Freiburg. She is thrilled to have had so many successful applications from 91ŃÇÉ« students.
“This is amazing. To my knowledge, after 15-plus years in my role, it’s the best record we’ve had,” she says. “It really speaks to the way that 91ŃÇÉ« International has been promoting the opportunity and working with people in our community. It helps put 91ŃÇÉ« back on the radar for German scholarly communities as well.”
MacRae notes the DAAD network is very active in Canada and provides opportunities for future funding.
Muci, who has spent time in Germany doing a joint degree with the University of Bologna in Italy and the University of Bielefeld, is looking forward to knowledge exchange with the research group.
Barakov says the DAAD funding has provided the means to advance his dissertation research.
“The longstanding tradition of academic exchange between Germany and Canada more broadly has very much played a foundational role in securing the possibility to actually go to Berlin in person, conduct work there and engage with their research community,” he says.
Faculty members and students interested in learning more about the DAAD programs and funding available to support research and study in Germany can contact goglobal@yorku.ca.
With files from Suzanne Bowness