Examples

Beer and wine can be understood from a variety of perspectives: as intoxicants, as market commodities, as elements of social ritual, as conservation of biodiversity, and so on. Particularly in our region, the production of these beverages have long histories and also important contemporary relevance as sources of economic prosperity, as aspects of cultural identity, and as features of the ever-changing relationship between human beings and nature.

The LAS mini-seminar "Beer and Wine as Crafts" combines expertise from the Majors Culture & History and Earth and Environmental Sciences. It focuses on craft as a way of describing the kind of knowledge and practice that structures this interaction in ways that offer both positive opportunity and negative consequences for the people, the organisms, and the environment. So, what is a craft? What makes craftwork distinct from other kinds of work? How is scientific expertise related to craftsmanship? How do human beings create relationships to other organisms and to the wider environment?

Besides various field trips, students and lecturers engaged themselves in science-based craftwork and went through the brewing process from mashing, lautering, boiling, hopping, cooling, to pitching – an interesting, funny, and also smelly inquiry into how natural organisms are used to make beer.

Materials and necessary guidance were provided by the local brewing expert, Clayton Robinson from Die Brauhandwerker – thank you for the support and many insights!

European Human Rights Moot Court Competition

In early 2020, four LAS students, coached by UCF's Dr. Stoyan Panov, took part in the ELSA's European Human Rights Moot Court Competition (EHRMCC), an international human rights competition, intended to focus on the human rights activities of the Council of Europe and in particular the European Convention on Human Rights. The EHRMCC is one of the most competitive and prestigious moot court competitions. The case concerned a military attack in an international armed conflict and the interaction of international humanitarian law with the legal framework of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Dr. Stoyan Panov and LAS student teams have participated in five editions of the ELSA ECHR Moot Court since 2015/16 and made it four times to the Final Rounds. Here you can find impressions on the 2016 and 2019 editions, where the LAS team even reached the quarterfinal.  

In light of the circumstances, the 8th edition of the EHRMCC took place in a hybrid format. A physical-presence Regional Round in Göttingen in February 2020 was followed by fully digital Final Rounds in "virtual Strasbourg" in June 2020. Upon successful submission of a written draft and oral presentation at the Regional Round in Göttingen, the UCF team was among the top 20 teams that qualified to participate in the highly competitive Final Rounds on 2-4 June 2020. Harry Parfitt, Jonas Skorzak, Julia Reus and Katharina Franke represented the UCF at the Competition. The UCF team placed 13 overall from out of more than 65 registered teams in the Competition this year. We congratulate the UCF team warmly!

"With this project, we deep-dived into complex human rights issues. We also developed very practical skills that are useful for all sorts of situations inside and outside of university - from legal drafting to public speaking. We had a great deal of fun and even made the unique experience of pleading in a virtual courtroom. Participating in the Moot Court was certainly one of the most enriching learning experiences during our time at UCF!" UCF Team

Image Analysis for the Sciences

Image and video processing is a part of our daily life: face recognition, QR code scanning, filters for social media, car navigation...It is also used within most fields of research: product quality control, microscope images analysis, MRI, CT... The aim of the course "Image Analysis" was to give an insight into current trends in technology such as image processing and machine learning. Dr. Ines Dedovic held this course as part of the Life Sciences curriculum in summer semester 2021. Prior knowledge in programming and math was not mandatory in order to encourage students of all fields not to think of software development as difficult and unlearnable. Students were given a wide range of code examples which helped them develop their own projects they can further extend in their later studies. Students independently searched for appropriate datasets, scientific papers, and additional code (improvements in methods taught in lessons). For training soft skills, projects were done only in teams.

Team 1	Team 2	Team 3

• 1. Application of facial accessories for online shopping (Team: Wenwen Bai, Bryony Bar, Anusha Bhat, Rulla Gabarine)
  This software allows online shoppers to visualize how different products would look on their faces in the comfort of their own home. Images are taken directly from the user’s webcam or can be uploaded manually. Facial features are detected, and virtual accessories and filters can be applied. Some example accessories included in our project are: glasses, hats and lipsticks.

• Solar Potential Analysis of Aerial Imagery using Machine Learning and Computer Vision (Team: Mallmann, Carla; Poehlman, Logan; Schachenmayr, Felix; Yoshioka, Daichi)
  Our project aims to develop an algorithm that can select and identify buildings and their shapes from satellite imagery, and to classify rooftop shapes and rooftop areas for assessing solar potential. Outputs would be: the number of buildings in a given area, building size and roof shape, as well as an estimated solar energy output of the roof area.

• Retinal OCT Scan Classification: Beating the MedMNIST Benchmark (Team: Laurin Ganser and Radu Diaconescu)
  For our project we took the OCTMNIST ophthalmological imaging dataset and beat the classification benchmark accuracy that the creators of the dataset have published in their paper and on their website (Tensorflow.org). Unlike their approach, which is using existing high-performance neural networks (such as Google’s AutoML Vision) and adapting them to their dataset, we used only a simple classification model.

These are some of the final student projects. By publishing them, we are opening ourselves to your criticism, and hoping for your feedback to improve and help us create an even better course in the future!

Global Sustainabilty Week 2022

During the Summer Semester 2022 the University College Freiburg (UCF) hosted their first-ever Global Sustainability Week (GSW). The GSW was a weeklong event packed with activities organized by our Governance major lecturer Ermelinda Kanushi in collaboration with the EcoAlas organization. The GSW had several breakfast lectures, evening guest lectures, a guided excursion at the Vauban quarter in Freiburg and also a photo competition.

This year’s GSW central topic was the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as envisaged in the Transforming our World – the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development document. Students all over the University of Freiburg attended the events, although the majority of the attendees were from the Liberal Arts and Science program at UCF.

Throughout this week, students had the chance to delve on different aspects of the SDGs and sustainability. They discussed innovative approaches to achieving the SDGs and learned about mechanisms on how to measure them. They checked the latest SDG data, dwelled on the Doughnut Economic model and expanded their knowledge on the politics of economic degrowth. In addition, they had the chance to take an excursion around the sustainable quarter in Freiburg – the Vauban – where they learned about sustainable urban and architectural settings.

At the end of the week, the students together with Ermelinda Kanushi organized a lovely closing ceremony.

Warm thanks goes to StuRa for financing the costs of the excursion at the Vauban sustainable neighborhood.

Poster	Excursion to Vauban	Lecture by Paul Walsh
Group photo	Lecture by Timothée Parrique	Winner Photo Competition