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Employee photo Ms.Mayra Elwes

Mayra Elwes (M.Sc.)

Doctoral Candidate and Research Assistant
ORCID: 0009-0005-9454-7174

Biography

Mayra Elwes joined the Institute for Biomedical Informatics in 2024 as a PhD student and research associate. She holds a master's and bachelor's in computer science at RWTH Aachen, with a minor in medicine. Her research focuses on developing machine learning methods for domain adaptation of time series data, leveraging sensor data to enhance patient care, and promoting FAIR data exchange in biomedical research. During her studies, Mayra worked on machine learning techniques for biosignal analysis. She also gained experience in medical device development (Institute for Embedded Systems, RWTH Aachen) and worked on interoperability challenges at medical device (AcuteCare InnovationHub, University Hospital Aachen) and the database level.

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Academic Background

Areas of Expertise

Domain Adaptation: Because shift happens.

Research Focus

  • Domain Adaptation
  • Biosignale
  • Researcher and PhD Candidate
    University of Cologne, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Cologne, Institute of Biomedical Informatics
  • -
    Master Student (Computer Science)
    RWTH Aachen University
  • -
    Bachelor Student (Computer Science)
    RWTH Aachen University

Current Teachings

Einführung in die computergestützte medizinische Signal Analyse

Bachelor Studies Clinical Semesters Clinicians Doctoral Studies Master Studies PostDoc Preclinical Semesters WiSe & SoSe WiSe + SoSe

Der menschliche Körper sendet kontinuierlich Biosignale aus, die wertvolle Einblicke in physiologische Prozesse liefern. In der Medizin werden diese Signale sowohl zu Forschungszwecken genutzt als auch um Diagnose und Monitoring von Krankheiten und Patienten zu unterstützen. Diese Veranstaltung bietet eine praxisnahe Einführung in die computergestützte Biosignalanalyse. Nach einer kurzen theoretischen Einführung zu den Grundlagen der Signalverarbeitung, einschließlich Definition, Erfassung und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten, erfolgt eine praktische Einführung in die Datenanalyse. Anhand eines realistischen Beispiels aus dem Patientenmonitoring im Intensivmedizin-Setting werden essentielle Schritte vermittelt: Daten-Vorbereitung, Feature-Engineering und die Vorhersage des Signals mit modernen Machine Learning Methoden durchgeführt. Es wird von Teilnehmenden der Besuch der vorangegangenen Veranstaltung ¿Coding Basics¿ oder ein äquivalentes Vorwissen in der Programmierung in Python vorausgesetzt.

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Studium Integrale: Hands-On Data Science

Bachelor Studies Master Studies WiSe

[This course is offered in English] Generating knowledge from data using machine learning (ML) is becoming increasingly important in every conceivable scientific field. To provide an introduction to data science, this course will cover various ML methods, including supervised and unsupervised methods, as well as techniques for evaluating and visualising the results.With a focus on practical implementation, all approaches presented will be briefly introduced theoretically and then implemented using the programming language python.Prior knowledge of programming is not required. The first lecture will cover a python demo. To pass the course the students have to apply the introduced methods in an own data science projects and present their results in a 5-10 minute presentation (depending on the number of participants). The projects and presentations will not be graded but have to meet the requirements presented in the lecture.

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Medical AI - From basics to pro: Heart Rate Variability & AI symbiosis in personalized medicine

Clinical Semesters Clinicians Doctoral Studies PostDoc Preclinical Semesters WiSe + SoSe & SoSe WiSe

[Diese Lehrveranstaltung wird nur auf Englisch angeboten] Heart rate variability (HRV) is widely used in clinical settings as a non-invasive autonomic nervous system function marker. It helps assess cardiovascular health, stress levels, and overall well-being. Clinicians use HRV to monitor conditions like heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, as well as to evaluate recovery in post-surgical and critically ill patients. HRV also plays a role in mental health, aiding in the diagnosis and management of anxiety, depression, or PTSD. Additionally, it is used in sports medicine and rehabilitation to track recovery and optimize training. Its broad applications make it a valuable tool in personalized medicine. The development of AI methods allows to make more complex predictions using multiple HRV parameters simultaneously. This complexity enabled successful decision support in the domains where HRV was not previously prominent for clinical use, such as epileptology. In this lecture block, we will discuss the technical aspects of HRV assessment, such as different sensors, data quality control or different HRV measures. We will review various types of clinical applications, but also the ¿citizen science¿ approach and sports coaching. For the practical part we take a dataset with precomputed R-to-R intervals and different labels (e.g. RR Interval Time Series Modeling: The PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2002 v1.0.0 ). We will test different machine learning approaches to classify the data, e.g. to detect whether the data was recorded in a stressed or relaxed phase. This block lecture does not require any previous coding experience, we will use the graphical low-code platform KNIME. Students are required to bring their own laptop.

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Coding Basics in Python

Clinical Semesters Preclinical Semesters Doctoral Studies Clinicians PostDoc SoSe & WiSe WiSe + SoSe

Einführung in die grundlegenden Konzepte der Programmierung in Python, die für die Auswertung von medizinischen und Forschungsdaten erforderlich sind. Die Teilnehmer werden in diesem interaktiven Seminar aus erster Hand lernen, wie sie ihren eigenen Code entwickeln und ausführen können.

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WissPro - Literaturrecherche

Preclinical Semesters SoSe

Dieses Seminar zielt darauf ab, Medizinstudenten zu unterstützen, die sich für WissPro 1&2-Projekte mit Literaturrecherche interessieren. Wir werden eine Einführungsvorlesung zu den Strategien und bewährten Verfahren der Literaturrecherche halten und verschiedene Themen anbieten, die von verschiedenen Mitgliedern unseres Instituts vorbereitet wurden. Die Arbeit wird durch einen Zeitplan mit mehreren Kontrollpunkten organisiert, und der Projektzeitraum wird mit Präsentationen der teilnehmenden Studierenden vor Ort abgeschlossen. Zu den derzeit angebotenen Themen gehören (ohne Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit): - KI-Entscheidungsunterstützungssysteme in der realen klinischen Praxis - Ernährungsspezifische Interventionen bei Krebs - Akzeptanz von medizinischen KI-Anwendungen durch Gesundheitspersonal und Studenten - Datenverschiebung in biomedizinischen Zeitreihen - Insulinsensitivität und Menstruationszyklus in der Allgemeinbevölkerung - Praktische Fälle von DiGA-Zertifizierungen für Softwareprodukte und Dienstleistungen - Interoperabilität im digitalisierten Gesundheitswesen in der Europäischen Union - Gemeinsame Nutzung medizinischer Metadaten: Herausforderungen und Lösungsvorschläge Falls Sie Unterstützung zu einem anderen Thema wünschen, kontaktieren Sie uns bitte, um zu prüfen, ob wir einen geeigneten Betreuer innerhalb oder außerhalb des Rahmens dieses Seminars finden können (ekaterina.kutafina@uni-koeln.de).

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Publications from Mayra Elwes

From normal to optimal: investigating metabolic and inflammatory parameters as predictors of survival in locally advanced cervical cancer

2025 - Open Access -
Mayra Elwes, Bhanu Prasanna Koppolu, Carminia Lapuz, Mark Tacey, Simone Marnitz, Oya Beyan, Maike Trommer, Ekaterina Kutafina

Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women, and recent studies have highlighted the importance of body composition markers in predicting patient outcomes. We build upon the data of 83 patients from the Uterus-11 study, to explore the relation of pairwise feature combinations to long-term progression-free survival. We propose a framework to identify the parameter combinations with pre-defined thresholds of “normal range” which provide good separation of the survival group. Further, we optimize the pair-wise thresholds to further improve the separation measured by F1 scores. This approach allowed us to improve the statistical significance of hazard ratios in comparison to the previous studies. The optimization results suggest that the normal ranges of well-established biomarkers such as body mass index could be shifted in the context of specific diseases to achieve optimal outcome.

Semi-automatic export of electrophysiological metadata to NFDI4Health Local Data Hubs: Use case of microneurography odML-tables: A technical Case Report

2024 - Open Access -
Mayra Roxana Elwes, Alina Troglio, Masoud Abedi, Martin Golebiewski, Frank Meineke, Toralf Kirsten, Barbara Namer, Oya Beyan, Ekaterina Kutafina

Introduction:

The Local Data Hub (LDH) is a platform for FAIR sharing of medical research (meta-)data. In order to promote the usage of LDH in different research communities, it is important to understand the domain-specific needs, solutions currently used for data organization and provide support for seamless uploads to a LDH. In this work, we analyze the use case of microneurography, which is an electrophysiological technique for analyzing neural activity.

Methods:

After performing a requirements analysis in dialogue with microneurography researchers, we propose a concept-mapping and a workflow, for the researchers to transform and upload their metadata. Further, we implemented a semi-automatic upload extension to odMLtables, a template-based tool for handling metadata in the electrophysiological community.

Results:

The open-source implementation enables the odML-to-LDH concept mapping, allows data anonymization from within the tool and the creation of custom-made summaries on the underlying data sets.

Discussion:

This concludes a first step towards integrating improved FAIR processes into the research laboratory’s daily workflow. In future work, we will extend this approach to other use cases to disseminate the usage of LDHs in a larger research community.

Harmonizing Microneurography Metadata with Local Data Hubs: A Concept

2026 - Open Access -
Mayra Roxana Elwes, Barbara Namer, Alina Troglio, Toralf Kirsten, Oya Beyan, Ekaterina Kutafina

This work aims to improve FAIR-ness of the microneurography research by integrating the local (meta)data to existing research data infrastructures. In the previous work, we developed an odML based solution for local metadata storage of microneurography data. However, this solution is limited to a narrow community. As a next step, we propose the integration into the Local Data Hubs, data-sharing services within NFDI4Health infrastructure. We outline a first concept, that streams chosen data from the established odMLtables GUI.