As part of our academic exchange in the Digital Health Partnership, we have sent the first group of Bachelor students from the Digital Health Cluser at the Hasso Plattner Insitute for Digital Engineering to visit our partners at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to conduct a small User Requirement Workshop for their Bachelor project. From January 17 to January 24, 2026, our students flew over to New York to meet the people they will be working together with on their project, as well as understand the needs and resources required to turn their idea into a reality. Our students had this to say about their trip:
“”The eight of you need to go to New York.”
That was what Lothar Wieler said in a meeting about two months ago. We followed that advice – and we are definitely not complaining.
“The eight” turned out to be Charlotte Beurer, Markus Rünzel, Tobias Rademacher, Peer Schild, Simon Kossack, Jan Berndt, Daniel Cermann and Nele Rodenhagen. And so, in January, we suddenly found ourselves in New York City, where our bachelor project moved from shared documents and video calls to hospital corridors and real conversations.
Under the supervision of Lothar Wieler, we are developing a tool that supports Infection Preventionists in gaining a clearer overview of infection chains of specific pathogens especially MRSA. The aim is to turn complex data into something that is actually useful in everyday hospital work – the helping not only to respond to ongoing outbreaks but also to recognize risks early and prevent them.
Being in New York allowed us to speak directly with hospital staff, understand their workflows and receive honest feedback on our current progress. These conversations helped us rethink assumptions, sharpen our focus and better understand what impact our work could have in practice. Finally meeting in person the people we had previously only known from Zoom calls was incredibly motivating and also strengthened the foundation for future collaboration.
Outside the hospital, we explored the city from very different angles. We watched a Broadway musical, spent time in Brooklyn and joined a “Rats and Trash Tour” – something that might not sound appealing at first but turned out to be surprisingly insightful. It was probably the only tour where everyone paid more attention to the sidewalk than to the skyline.
Looking back, this week gave our project a clearer direction and gave us countless shared moments we will remember long after this Bachelor project is finished. What started with one sentence in a meeting turned into an experience that shaped both our work and our perspective.
We would like to sincerely thank Lothar Wieler, as well as Girish Nadkarni and Harm van Bakel for hosting, the DHP coordination office for all the support and Akhyar Ahmed as project supervisor for making this trip possible.”
We are happy to welcome our students back home and hope they enjoyed their trip! Within our Digital Health Partnership, we have learned that meeting face-to-face sparks the strongest collaborations and we aim to create more opportunities such as this for direct exchanges, not just for students, but for researchers, developers and clinicians alike.
