2020_04_01_THREAD in Times of the Corona Crisis: Phd Position With Challenges

What Happens Now?

His supervisor at our institute, Dr.-Ing. Joachim Linn, who already knows the young Italian personally from his job interview, talks about regular Skype sessions on Fridays. »As soon as the Italians are allowed back into the office, there will be a workplace for him in the fleXstructures GmbH Italia office, they are also based in Turin and are already looking forward to the guest. So we can bridge the time of travel restrictions quite well«, said the head of the department »Mathematics for the Digital Factory« at Fraunhofer ITWM. fleXstructures is a spin-off of the institute.

There is also the idea of a Turin THREAD learning group: another THRAED doctoral student, Denise Tumiotto, is also based in Turin. It may be possible to organize a workplace for her at fleXstructures Italia.

THREAD PhD Student Davide Manfredo

Davide Manfredo has completed his Master’s degree in Mathematics for Life Sciences at Università di Trento, in Italy. After finishing his Bachelor’s degree in pure Mathematics at Università di Torino, he decided to go into applied mathematics. During his academic path, he also had the chance to study in France and Thailand, and to do an internship in Spain where he already gained a lot of international experience.

Thanks to his Bachelor’s degree he has a solid base in pure mathematics and during his Master’s degree, he specialized in numerical analysis, simulations, and coding. During his Master's degree he focused more on biomedical applications. As a PhD student at the Fraunhofer ITWM, he then dealt with cables and tubes, among other things. THREAD's research projects focus on the question of how thin flexible structures such as ropes, cable bundles, tubes or medical devices such as endoscopes can be better modelled and simulated on the computer in the future.

»I am confident that working in the THREAD project will undoubtedly not only improve my scientific expertise but will also allow me to meet inspiring people and make me discover new aspects of the world around me,« says Manfredo. However, he is now getting to know his new colleagues better digitally.