Prof. Dr. Lena Maier-Hein

Managing Director NCT Heidelberg
Head of Division: Intelligent Medical Systems, DKFZ

Lena Maier-Hein is head of the division Intelligent Medical Systems at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and serves as managing director of the DKFZ Data Science and Digital Oncology cross-topic program. Her research concentrates on machine learning-based biomedical image analysis with a specific focus on surgical data science, computational biophotonics and validation of machine learning algorithms.

During her academic career, Lena Maier-Hein has been distinguished with several science awards including the 2013 Heinz Maier Leibnitz Award of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the 2017/18 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy Prize. She is further a fellow of the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) society and of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS). Further international recognitions include a European Research Council (ERC) starting grant (2015-2020) and consolidator grant (2021-2026).

Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Selected publications

Positions and Employment

2013
Habilitation at the University of Heidelberg

2011
Baden-Württemberg Certificate for University Didactics

2009
Dr.-Ing. with distinction (summa cum laude) awarded by KIT

2005 – 2008
Ph.D. scholarship holder within Research Training Group 1126: Intelligent Surgery, Div. Medical and Biological Informatics, DKFZ, Heidelberg

2005
Diploma (Dipl.-Inform.) in Computer Science at KIT mark 1.0 (with distinction)

2003
International diploma, Imperial College London, UK

1999
Abitur (A-level equiv.) at the Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium, Hamburg; mark: 1.0

1997
School abroad at Hallandale High School, Florida (USA); GPA: 4.6

Academic Education

2022 –
Managing director of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg (Germany)

2021 –
Managing Director of the DKFZ Data Science and Digital Oncology cross-topic (Heidelberg, Germany)

2020 – 2026
Co-option, Faculty for Mathematics and Informatics, Heidelberg University

2017 –
Professor at the University of Heidelberg (Germany); Faculty of Medicine (since 2017); Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences (since 2020)

2016 –
Head of Div. Intelligent Medical Systems, DKFZ

2012 – 2016
Head of Junior group Intelligent Medical Systems, DKFZ

2009 –
Secondary employment as lecturer at Heilbronn University, University Heidelberg (Germany)

Fellowships and Awards

2019
Elected Fellow of the International Society for Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI)

2019
European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) AI Fellow (Health)

2018
Medical Image Analysis/ MICCAI best paper award 2018

2017
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy Prize 2017

2017
International Conference on Information Processing in Computer-Assisted Interventions (IPCAI) Bench-to-Bedside Award 2017

2015
Best paper at the conference IPCAI 2015

2013
Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

2010
Ingrid-zu-Solms Prize for Natural Sciences 2009/2010, awarded by the Ingrid-zu-Solms Stiftung

Professional Society Membership

2021 –
President of the MICCAI special interest group on challenges

2021 –
Editor for Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Transaction of Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

2020 –
Editor for Medical Image Analysis

2018 – 2022
Board member of the MICCAI society

2018 – 2021
General chair of the international conference IPCAI

2016
General chair of the Surgical Data Science Initiative and corresponding workshops in 2016 and 2019

L. Maier-Hein, Matthias Eisenmann, D. Sarikaya, K. März, T. Collins, A. Malpani, J. Fallert, H. Feussner, S. Giannarou, P. Mascagni, H. Nakawala, A. Park, C. Pugh, D. Stoyanov, S. S. Vedula, K. Cleary, G. Fichtinger, G. Forestier, B. Gibaud, T. Grantcharov, M. Hashizume, D. Heckmann-Nötzel, H. G. Kenngott, R. Kikinis, L. Mündermann, N. Navab, S. Onogur, T. Roß, R. Sznitman, R. H. Taylor, M. D. Tizabi, M. Wagner, G. D. Hager, T. Neumuth, N. Padoy, J. Collins, I. Gockel, J. Goedeke, D. A. Hashimoto, L. Joyeux, K. Lam, D. R. Leff, A. Madani, H. J. Marcus, O. Meireles, A. Seitel, D. Teber, F. Ückert, B. P. Müller-Stich, P. Jannin, S. Speidel. Surgical data science–from concepts toward clinical translation. Medical image analysis, Vol. 76, pp 102306 (2022).
J. Gröhl, T. Kirchner, T. J. Adler, L. Hacker, N. Holzwarth, A. Hernández-Aguilera, M. A. Herrera, E. Santos, S. E. Bohndiek and L. Maier-Hein. Learned spectral decoloring enables photoacoustic oximetry. Scientific Reports, Vol. 11(1), pp 1-12 (2021).
L. Ardizzone, J. Kruse, S. Wirkert, D. Rahner, E. W. Pellegrini, R. S. Klessen, L. Maier-Hein, C. Rother, U. Köthe. Analyzing inverse problems with invertible neural networks. International Conference on Learning Representations (2019).
L. Maier-Hein, M. Eisenmann, A. Reinke, S. Onogur, M. Stankovic, P. Scholz, T. Arbel, H. Bogunovic, A. P. Bradley, A Carass, C. Feldmann, A.F. Frangi, P.M. Full, B. van Ginneken, A. Hanbury, K. Honauer, M. Kozubek, B. A. Landman, K. März, O. Maier, K. Maier-Hein, B. H. Menze, H. Müller, P. F. Neher, W. Niessen, N. Rajpoot, G. C. Sharp, K. Sirinukunwattana, S. Speidel, C. Stock, D. Stoyanov, A. Aziz Taha, F. van der Sommen, C-W. Wang, M-A Weber, G. Zheng, P. Jannin, A. Kopp-Schneider. Why rankings of biomedical image analysis competitions should be interpreted with care. Nature Communications, Vol. 9, pp 1-13 (2018).
S. J. Wirkert, H. Kenngott, B. Mayer, P. Mietkowski, M. Wagner, P. Sauer, N. T. Clancy, D. S. Elson and L. Maier-Hein. Robust near real-time estimation of physiological parameters from megapixel multispectral images with inverse Monte Carlo and random forest regression. International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, Vol 11(6), pp 909-917 (2016).

Prof. Dr. Lena Maier-Hein