STAEDTLER Foundation Supports FAU Research on AI-Powered Diagnostics with €125,500

The Pattern Recognition Lab at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is pleased to announce that its interdisciplinary research initiative, “Next-generation AI for Integrated Diagnostics,” has been awarded €125,500 in funding from the STAEDTLER Foundation as part of this year’s funding round.

Led by Professor Dr.-Ing. habil. Andreas Maier, the project aims to usher in a new era of personalized and integrated diagnostics by combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) with innovative imaging technologies and intelligent sensing systems. Its central goal is to address the global rise of chronic diseases—such as cardiovascular conditions and cancer—through earlier detection, individualized treatment, and long-term patient engagement within a holistic healthcare management framework.

“We are deeply grateful to the STAEDTLER Foundation for their generous support and trust. This funding allows us to advance excellence in AI and medical research, and to make meaningful contributions to the future of healthcare,” said Professor Maier.

Initial results are already demonstrating the project’s potential: advances range from deep-learning models for early tumor detection and privacy-preserving diagnostic systems in radiology, to self-supervised methods for clinical image analysis and uncertainty-aware models for treatment planning. Graph neural networks are being applied to better understand complex tissue structures, while transformer-based architectures are improving the robustness of image-based predictions across tumor types and even across species.

This funding marks a significant step toward the project’s overarching vision: to make healthcare more affordable, effective, and ethically grounded—with FAU and its partners at the forefront of Medical AI innovation.