Dr. Ulrich Eck and Dr. Thomas Wendler promoted to Vice-Directors of the Chair

Following an internal restructuring and as acknowledgment for the hard work over the last years and the carried responsibility, Prof. Navab decided to promote Dr. Ulrich Eck and Dr. Thomas Wendler to Vice-Directors of the Chair. Ulrich, who joined our team in 2016, is managing the Chair's NARVIS lab at Klinikum Innenstadt. Thomas, who came back to the Chair in 2019 after 12 years in industry, manages the Interdisciplinary Research Lab at Klinikum rechts der Isar. Both also are pillars for the Chair in teaching, co-supervision of Ph.D. candidates, and grant managing.

			Dr. Ulrich Eck has a Ph.D. in Computer Science (University of South Australia, 2016). Since 2016, Ulrich manages the Medical Augmented Reality research group NARVIS at the Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures at Technical University of Munich and is part of the IFL research group. His activities are focused mainly in the field of mixed and augmented reality to improve human-computer interaction for medical education, training, and intervention, as well as context-aware support during computer-assisted surgical interventions. Ulrich received ten awards (ISMAR, VR, MICCAI, VBCM), has authored two book chapters, and published 10 articles in national and international scientific journals (TVCG, IJCARS, Unfallchirurg) and 30 conference papers. He serves on the Steering committee of the IEEE Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Prior to his academic career, Dr. Eck served as CEO for three companies in the areas of Information Technologies, Property Management, and Retail.
			Dr. Thomas Wendler has a Ph.D. in Computer Science (TUM, 2010). After 12 years as co-founder and managing director of three startups in the medical device field, Thomas joined again the Chair in 2019. As managing director of the interdisciplinary research lab (IFL) at Klinikum rechts der Isar, Thomas manages the IFL team including more than 20 Ph.D. candidates and postdocs. His focus is mainly on the development and clinical integration of innovative hardware and software solutions. His main areas of research are image-guided surgery, medical robotics and machine learning applications for medical diagnostics, clinical decision support, and therapy planning. Thomas is the author of two book chapters, 25 peer-reviewed publications, and 14 patent applications (8 of them granted). Thomas has also a degree in Electrical Engineering (Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, 2004) and a Master in Medical Technology (2007, TUM).