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12/03/2021 | Pressemitteilung

LOEWE funding: "Curse of dimension" in machine learning methods

In the new funding line "LOEWE-Exploration" for unconventional innovative research, the University of Kassel receives state funding for its research: Dr. Tom Hanika from the Department of Knowledge Processing investigates the influence of the "curse of dimension" on machine learning methods.

Image: Dr. Tom Hanika.
Dr. Tom Hanika.

The Hessian Ministry of Science and the Arts yesterday announced which research projects will receive funding in funding line 5 "LOEWE Exploration" from January 1, 2022, including a project at Kassel University. This funding line aims to implement novel, innovative and daring research ideas that challenge or substantially expand current scientific understanding in a field. Dr. Hanika's funded research project quantifies and evaluates high-dimensional concentration phenomena in data, which are often associated with the term "dimension curse."

This is the name given to the interplay of a variety of effects that occur when machine learning is applied to high-dimensional data, such as tumors in medicine. So far, this phenomenon cannot yet be calculated with algorithms. It is therefore open to what extent it has decisively influenced results of scientific applications. The goal of the "Dimension Curse Detector" project is to develop a computable approximation of the concentration phenomenon and to apply it as a prototype. In this way, scientific results from the past ten years in the field of artificial intelligence will be evaluated and tested for the occurrence of the dimension curse.

The research funding program "LOEWE-Exploration

The research project is funded by the research funding program LOEWE-Exploration with project funds amounting to 287,553 euros with a duration of two years. A total of 7 projects from Hessian universities were selected in this new funding line, which will receive project funding totaling a good two million euros. "The new LOEWE-Exploration funding line is designed to give researchers the freedom to pursue bold, highly innovative ideas. After all, science must be allowed to take risks and fail from time to time in order to generate innovation," explains Science Minister Angela Dorn.

The State Offensive for the Development of Scientific and Economic Excellence - LOEWE for short - is the title of the research funding program with which the State of Hesse has been providing science policy impetus since 2008, with the aim of strengthening the Hessian research landscape in the long term.  Since then, LOEWE has been funding outstanding research projects, highly innovative research ideas and excellent scientists in five funding lines.

Cooperation partner of the LOEWE exploration project "Dimension Curse Detector" is Prof. Martin Schneider from the Institute of Discrete Mathematics and Algebra at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg.

 

Contact:

Dr. Tom Hanika
University of Kassel
Department of Knowledge Processing
Tel.: +49 561 804-6350
Email: Tom.Hanika[at]cs.uni-kassel[dot]de

 

Press contact:

Sebastian Mense
University of Kassel
Communications, Press and Public Relations
Tel.: 0561 804-1961
Email: presse[at]uni-kassel[dot]de