Three visits, three routes into trustworthy research

For two weeks, Research Explorer Ruhr turns the idea of international research exchange into something tangible: conversations in offices and labs, first drafts of proposals, and the careful testing of whether research interests can grow into future collaborations. At RC Trust, this became visible in three very different visits.
Through these visits, Minh Nguyen, Mohammad Nur Al Homsi, and Raju Dey joined research groups at TU Dortmund University with strong connections to their own work. The stays went well beyond first introductions. They created valuable opportunities to exchange ideas, visit laboratories, join group discussions, develop proposals, and explore future collaborations.

Human-AI interaction for mobility

Minh Nguyen is currently based in Sydney, Australia, where he works as a research assistant and tutor while transitioning from PhD researcher to an independent researcher. His background lies in Human-Computer Interaction, Brain-Computer Interfaces and Cognitive Neuroscience. At the University of Technology Sydney, his research focuses on how people with blindness or vision impairment process auditory information and how this affects mobility.
At RC Trust, Minh Nguyen visited Prof. Sven Mayer’s Human-AI Interaction group. The match was precise. Nguyen is interested in smart mobility aids that combine sound, tactile feedback, physiological sensing and AI. But for him, the central question is not simply whether AI can generate information. It is how that information can be adapted to the cognitive processes and needs of the blind and visually impaired person using the system.
During his stay, Nguyen discussed his research ideas with Prof. Mayer and his whole team. The stay offered him deep insights into the day-to-day business of the team and how they operationalize high-quality research. For him, the visit helped sharpen ideas at a crucial career stage in  transitioning  to a independent researcher. During the on-site conversation with the local research group, he materialized his ongoing research methodology.

Formal methods for safer learning systems

For Mohammad Nur Al Homsi, the visit also quickly became concrete. Al Homsi is a doctoral researcher in the national DRIM programme, administratively coordinated by the University of Genoa and hosted by the University of Palermo, Italy. His research focuses on Safe Reinforcement Learning and trustworthy AI for robotic systems.
At TU Dortmund University, he visited Prof. Daniel Neider, whose chair works on Verification and Formal Guarantees of Machine Learning. The connection lies in a shared interest in combining formal methods with learning-enabled systems. In practical terms, Al Homsi and Neider discussed how runtime verification can be integrated into Safe Reinforcement Learning – and worked on a joint DFG research proposal.
This makes the visit more than a short academic exchange. It points toward a possible longer collaboration at the intersection of autonomous systems, formal verification and trustworthy AI.

Statistics for complex data

Raju Dey brought a third perspective to RC Trust. He is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he completed his PhD in Statistics in January 2026. His work focuses on statistical inference under constraints, factorial designs, distributional overlap measures and resampling techniques, with particular interest in biomedical applications.
Dey visited Prof. Markus Pauly, whose chair, Mathematical statistics and applications in industry, closely aligns with these interests. During the stay, they worked on a research proposal in the area of general factorial designs, discussed possible revisions and explored future research directions. Dey also exchanged ideas with PhD students and postdocs in the group, gaining new perspectives on methodological challenges in statistics.

A program for future connections

Research Explorer Ruhr is a two-week program of the UA Ruhr Research Academy for international researchers in the final phase of their PhD or at the beginning of their postdoctoral career. From 21 June to 4 July 2026, the program brought 37 early career researchers from 18 countries to the Ruhr area. Participants work with host professors and research groups at TU Dortmund University, Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Duisburg-Essen, while also learning about career paths, funding opportunities and the German academic system.
At RC Trust, the program made visible how international research connections begin: not with a finished collaboration, but with shared questions, careful listening and the time to see whether ideas can grow together.