Patrick Godau

About Me

I am a PostDoc at the German Cancer Research Center. Under supervision from Lena Maier-Hein I am leading the subgroup of Intelligent Systems in Surgery and Endoscopy (ISSE) in the division of Intelligent Medical Systems.

My current research focuses on surgical foundation models – trained on national HPC infrastructure through a Gauss Centre for Supercomputing compute grant – and trustworthy surgical-safety AI, including the international FOCUS Challenge (Foreign Object Contextual Understanding for Safe Surgical AI) at MICCAI 2026. More broadly, I work on computer vision and deep learning for medicine – building systems that are data-efficient, continual and rigorously validated. My research interests include Foundation Models, Medical Imaging, Transfer-Learning, Meta-Learning, Lifelong Learning, and the validation and benchmarking of AI.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science (summa cum laude, 2025) at Heidelberg University under Prof. Lena Maier-Hein, on lifelong machine learning for biomedical image classification. Before that I studied Mathematics (Bachelor 2015, Master 2019) and Computer Science (Bachelor 2018), specializing at their intersection: theoretical computer science.

Expertise

• Surgical Foundation & Vision-Language Models
• Validation & Benchmarking of Medical AI
• Data-Efficient & Lifelong Learning (transfer, meta-learning)

International Challenges

• RARE25: Recognition of Abnormalities in low-pREvalence cancer
  @ MICCAI 2025
  (1st place)
• Critical View of Safety Challenge
  @ MICCAI 2024
  (2nd overall, 1st in generalization)
• PitVis Workflow Recognition in Endoscopic Pituitary Surgery
  @ MICCAI 2023
  (1st place instrument recognition)
• CholecTriplet2022
  @ MICCAI 2022
  (1st place detection and classification)
• Endoscopy computer vision challenge 2.0
  @ ISBI 2022
  (1st place polyp detection)
• Gastrointestinal ImAge ANAlysis (GIANA)
  @ MICCAI 2021
  (1st place polyp classification)

Awards

• BVM Award
  best thesis award of the German Conference on Medical Image Computing (Bildverarbeitung für die Medizin) 2026
• MedIA Best Paper Award
  best paper award for the journal extension of our 2023 MICCAI paper
• Best Challenge Reviewer Award
  @ MICCAI 2023
  (2nd place)
• Best Challenge Reviewer Award
  @ MICCAI 2020
  (1st place)
• HIDA Datathon on Grand Challenges on Climate Change
  winner of the subchallenge “Mit kosmischer Strahlung Wasser finden” in 2020

Selected Publications

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