Wired-up legs of a test participant on a treadmill

Award-winning research: Sensor-equipped insoles are designed to improve assistive systems such as prostheses.

| Bastian Latsch

2026-10-01 VDE dialog

DGBMT Klee prize: How technology is transforming Medicine

Three young electrical engineers are demonstrating how technology can improve medical care: through contactless monitoring of premature infants, innovative sensors for assistive systems, and energy-efficient chips for analyzing biosignals. Their work lies at the intersection of medicine and technology – and bridges the gap between research and clinical practice.

By Beatrice Hüper

Sometimes medical progress begins not in the operating room, but at the desk of an electrical engineer. This is where camera systems are developed that can monitor premature infants without physical contact, sensors that enable prostheses to respond more quickly, and microchips that can detect symptoms with high energy efficiency. Such innovations can improve diagnoses, facilitate treatment, and fundamentally change patients’ everyday lives. But young scientists in particular need time, funding, and recognition to turn a promising idea into technology that may eventually make its way into clinical practice. Gerhard Klee understood this. The Frankfurt-based engineer held 165 patents and owed much of his financial success to his own inventions. He wanted to give something back: in 1994, he established the Klee Family Foundation to support young researchers working at the interface of medicine and technology. The Klee prize, named after the foundation, is now being awarded for the 32nd time, once again demonstrating how diverse the medicine of tomorrow is already taking shape. In 2026, the jury, chaired by Prof. Dr. Olaf Dössel, honored three young electrical engineers for their research.

First prize went to Dr. Simon Lyra for his doctoral thesis on camera-based, real-time monitoring of newborns’ vital signs using deep learning. “Anyone who has ever seen a pulse oximeter on the tiny finger of a premature infant immediately understands why this research is so important,” says Olaf Dössel. Emotional considerations, however, played no role in selecting the winners: “All patients are equally valuable.” What mattered was that “Simon Lyra chose a topic that affects many people: one in ten babies is born prematurely. And he has already tested his system in clinical studies. All of this greatly impressed us,” Dössel explains.

Portrait photos of the three Klee prize winners

Dr. Simon Lyra, Dr. Bastian Latsch and Dr. Ingo Hoyer are the winners of the 2026 VDE DGBMT Family Klee Foundation Prize.

| Private

Simon Lyra became interested in contactless monitoring of premature infants during an internship at RWTH Aachen University. His experience on the neonatal intensive care unit at University Hospital Aachen – a specialized department providing round-the-clock care for premature and sick newborns – sparked his interest in the topic. Electrodes and sensors are attached to babies in the same way as they are to adults, using medical adhesive. This provides a secure hold, but on thin, sometimes immature skin, it can cause injuries, resulting in pain and stress and, consequently, increased oxygen consumption, which can negatively affect the child’s development. There is another issue: wiring up the infants can be very stressful for parents and requires considerable effort from medical staff. “My camera system solves many of these problems,” Simon Lyra is convinced. It could also be used in other areas of medicine, for example to monitor older patients or pilots in aircraft and drivers in cars. If irregularities in vital signs could be detected at an early stage, this might potentially help prevent accidents caused by seizures or acute cardiovascular conditions. But there is still a long way to go. Medical devices used in intensive care are already subject to strict requirements. When a monitoring system, data collection, and AI are added, as in Lyra’s work, “you practically need every approval that is available,” he says. He would have liked to continue working on the project: “Unfortunately, our research project has ended, and there is no follow-up project in sight.” Lyra currently works as a co-founder of a startup in the field of automation technology. But he has not forgotten his doctoral research. “If work in this field continues and someone finds a source of funding, I’ll be back immediately.”

To obtain basic data for developing an algorithm to monitor babies, Klee prize winner Simon Lyra first placed a dummy baby in the incubator.

| Daniel Blase

Dr. Bastian Latsch also intends to continue working on his research topic. He received second prize for his doctoral thesis on flexible 3D-printed sensors for wearable human motion analysis and their use in assistive systems. The electrical engineer from TU Darmstadt, specializing in measurement and sensor technology, has focused on assistive systems for people with walking impairments and has taken an unconventional approach. “Until now, it has often been the case that engineers design systems and patients have to adapt to them.” The interdisciplinary LokoAssist project at TU Darmstadt takes a different approach: experts in orthopaedic technology, medicine, sports science, and robotics, as well as specialists from the Central Institute of Mental Health, work together with engineers. For Latsch, participating in the project as an electrical engineer is appealing because “you develop something and immediately see that it helps people.” Specifically, he has worked on sensors for prostheses that, unlike conventional sensors, measure mechanically rather than electrically. “Bastian Latsch has developed novel force myography sensors that can detect muscle activity in the legs,” explains jury chair Olaf Dössel, summarizing the approach of the second-prize winner. He praises the fact that “the innovative systems are being tested in studies with human subjects.” Latsch tested his system on just under a dozen participants without walking impairments and was able to show that his sensors detect the onset of a movement earlier. The idea is that, in the future, prostheses could support the wearer at the very moment a movement is initiated.

Latsch continues to work at TU Darmstadt after completing his doctoral thesis and remains actively involved in the LokoAssist project. “It’s a very productive phase right now. For example, we are currently conducting a study with a person who has bilateral leg amputations.” However, Latsch is not planning a purely academic career: “I want to build a strong technical foundation here, but I definitely also want to gain experience on the industry side.”

Dr. Ingo Hoyer’s work also has significance beyond its application in medical technology. He receives third prize for his doctoral thesis on reconfigurability in AI hardware accelerators for the energy-efficient analysis of biosignals. The electrical engineer first came into contact with digital circuit technology as a school student through the VDE microchip competition INVENT a CHIP, which he won twelve years ago. He has now developed chips that use artificial intelligence to process data more efficiently in small medical devices. “Analyzing biosignals with the help of AI methods already plays an outstanding role today, and its importance will certainly continue to grow,” says jury chair Olaf Dössel. Initial analysis often needs to take place directly within the wearable device. This requires systems that are small and lightweight and consume little power. “Ingo Hoyer is developing such new intelligent and reconfigurable systems and demonstrates their outstanding capabilities using AI-assisted ECG analysis as an example,” Dössel says. In addition, Hoyer worked with an ECG manufacturer at Charité Berlin to evaluate and analyze signals and develop an algorithm that can identify medical conditions based on those signals. By grouping similar conditions together, he created chips that can detect not just one but several diseases. This addresses the challenge that semiconductor manufacturing is only economically viable at very high production volumes.

Three award winners, three different approaches to improving patient care. According to Olaf Dössel, what they all have in common is this: “They stand out not only for their scientific excellence and outstanding presentation. They also have a direct connection to clinical patient care and therefore have great practical significance for the medicine of tomorrow.”