Doctoral Program MENELAOS

The European Training Network on Multimodal Environmental Exploration Systems – Novel Technologies (MENELAOSNT) stems from an initiative of Prof. Dr. Otmar Loffeld from the Center for Sensor Systems at the University of Siegen (ZESS). Dialog with Fraunhofer FHR led to the idea of establishing a collaboration between renowned European institutions in the field of Compressed Sensing. After several years of planning, the program was initiated on January 1, 2020. MENELAOSNT is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research and innovation program. It provides 15 international early stage researchers with the opportunity to progress to a PhD via research on various algorithmic and hardware-oriented tasks.

Fraunhofer FHR is one of the collaborating partners of MENELAOSNT and is supervising two early stage researchers based in the High Frequency Radar and Applications (HRA) and Cognitive Radar (KR) departments. Sanhita Guha works at HRA, Saravanan Nagesh at KR. Both of them will also spend several months conducting research at the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv, as well as at the University of Siegen and the Polytechnic University of Bucharest as part of their three-year doctoral programs.

The program comprises specialized lectures and courses at the partner universities, which take place online. In addition, the up-and-coming scientists are offered face-to-face workshops at their institutes on topics such as scientific writing, communication skills, job application strategies, networking at conferences, etc. Dr. Andreas Bathelt of HRA is the program
coordinator at Fraunhofer FHR. "It is great to see the results the PhD students are achieving in the program. Compared to the usual tasks of the institute, whose focus is more on the application of methods in for example industrial projects, the Horizon 2020 MSCA grant allows our ESRs to work independentlyfrom this focus. They work independently, unlike industrial projects, for example, where the focus is always on the application for the partners. Therefore, they can go much more into the details depth and design new methodologies themselves. MENELAOSNT envisages that the PhD students’ results will also be used further later on, definitely by the Institute," says Andreas Bathelt.

Sanhita Guha

"I first completed a Bachelor's degree in electronics and instrumentation technology in Bangalore, India. Then I went to France to the Georgia Institute of Technology in Metz. I completed my Master's degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering there, graduating in May 2020. I came across MENELAOSNT while looking for an interesting PhD program. I am now doing research in the HRA department at Fraunhofer FHR for my PhD on "Adaptive methods of Compressed Sensing for more efficient Radar Detection and Localization". I am working on methods that can increase the resolution of narrow-band radar systems using band fusion. I am very pleased to be collaborating with Dr. Andreas Bathelt as my Supervisor, with Prof. Dr. Joachim Ender and Prof. Dr. Loffeld supervising my PhD. MENELAOSNT is a comprehensive program, where I hope to learn a lot. I like networking with different professors in Europe, the conference opportunities, the possibility to improve my soft skills and German language skills. I would also like to work in the field of Compressed Sensing after my PhD."

Saravanan Nagesh

"After completing my Bachelor's in Electronics and Communications in Bangalore, India, I worked as a research fellow at the Center for Airborne Systems, in the area of airborne communication and radar systems. Later, I joined Robert Bosch as a senior engineer in the area of vehicle safety systems for the Asia-Pacific region. Since, I was interested in learning more on Radars, I chose to pursue a Master's degree in electrical engineering, majoring in radar signal processing at the Technical University of Delft, in the Netherlands. The MENELAOSNT program consisted of a well-structured career development plan with opportunities to work in top R&D establishments, this motivated me to join Fraunhofer FHR as an Early Stage Researcher at the KR department. My PhD supervisor is Prof Dr. Joachim Ender and Dr María González-Huici as the supervising advisor. My study focuses on the design of "Coded Waveform for Colocated MIMO Radar using Sparse Modeling". I am excited about the opportunity to work on cognitive automotive radars and look forward to learning German. I trust my work, may one day contribute to reduce road fatalities."

Annual Report 2020