Kane Friedenhagen
I study human thought from a more mathematical/scientific perspective, and want to help build technology that genuinely works with people rather than against them.
Curious by nature
Nice to meet you! I'm Kane, a B.Sc. Cognitive Science student at the University of Tübingen and currently working as research assistant at the Leibniz Institute for Digital Media. My interests sit at the intersection of neuroscience, language, and mathematics. Broadly: how do complex systems give rise to meaning? What would a genuinely good relationship between humans and technology look like? Right now, at the Leibniz Institute, I'm working on something more concrete: finding ways LLMs could help students stay engaged in class.
Outside of that, I run, swim, cycle and lift, read a lot, and pick up a new language every now and then (currently French and Chinese). I tend to get interested in things where different fields meet, which is great for finding new rabbit holes and less great for finishing all of them.
What interests me.
Neuroscience
I am fascinated by the fact that millions of tiny cells and their connections give rise to concrete lived experience, memory, and human decision-making. In times of AI everywhere, it's increasingly important to find out exactly what makes us human. With better tools at our disposal, the brain is more transparent than ever before, and I want to help work on technology that can help us understand it in new ways.
Mathematics
To me, mathematics is not just a tool, but a different way of seeing the world. It allows one to describe just about everything in nature, from the tiny and small to the large and complex - all of which are necessary in understanding human cognition.
Psychology
Psychology allows us to discuss how people actually think, decide and get things wrong. So in some ways, psychology is an empirical practice of philosophy. It also serves as a link between neurosciene, human behaviour, and societal dynamics, which makes it very compelling to me.
Athletic Training
Training is the way I can experiment first-hand with the body-mind connection. How does movement actually impact my energy, focus, and recovery? What kind of training is best for my brain, and how much of it is actually measurable? I'm interested in exploring these questions both personally and through the projects I'm building.
Things I'm building.
More to come.
From small experiments to larger tools — stay tuned.
Cognition × Training
I want to explore how cognitive performance and physical training interact — and what useful tools could be developed to help people find their own optimal balance. Some ideas include a motivation tracker for language learners and an analytic database + dashboard linking training data to subsequent degree and duration of focus. This would build on the workout tracker I'm currently developing. Essentially: taking a more rigorous look at what my own training data can and can't tell me about focus and cognition.
Workout & Load Tracker
A full-stack Flask application that calculates rolling training load (CTL/ATL/TSB) and tracks the impact of physical exertion on whole-body energy levels. All the apps I tend to use for this often lack the ability to add subjective measures of how workouts impacted me, especially in terms of soreness and energy levels. This is an attempt to create a more holistic picture of how specific types of training impact my body, and to experiment with what kind of data visualization might be most useful in understanding that relationship. Current features include:
- Rolling load calculations (CTL/ATL/TSB) based on user-inputted workouts
- Subjective workout impact ratings (energy, soreness, motivation)
- Muscle soreness tracking by body area
- Data visualizations linking training load to subjective impact, featuring interactive line charts and a radar chart
- Recommendations based on training load and subjective impact
- Overtraining warning
- Automatic weather integration using a free API
- A progress and PR section to keep track of achievements
Coming soon:
- More detailed goal tracking and export options
- LLM-based insights and recommendations based on recent training patterns and current goals
- More in-depth sleep and energy correlation, as well as recovery method tracking
- Perhaps in the long run, a responsive mobile interface using React Native
(Design) Ember — Digital Wellbeing App
A solo UX design project from my exchange semester at NUS Singapore. Ember is a mobile app concept designed to help young adults understand the emotional impact of their screen use — not through shaming or blocking, but through compassionate correlational insight.
- User research via Reddit netnography, peer interviews, and competitor analysis of 8 existing apps
- Designed around three core tasks: mood logging in context, digestible app-emotion visualisations, and non-judgmental AI insights
- Lo-fi and hi-fi Figma prototypes with a dark-mode-first aesthetic and a hand-drawn mascot character
- Full UCD design-thinking process: empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test
(Design) Frendzy — Social Event Planner
A group UX design project (4 people) from my exchange semester at NUS Singapore. Frendzy is a mobile app that helps friend groups go from idea to event — proposing plans, polling availability, tracking attendance, and preserving shared memories, all in one place.
- Mixed-methods research: 4 semi-structured interviews, 29 survey responses, and competitor analysis of 10 apps
- User personas, affinity diagrams, journey maps, and 24 functional requirements derived from real pain points
- Lo-fi prototype in Balsamiq, hi-fi prototype in Figma with full interactive flows
- Usability evaluation and think-aloud testing with iterative design improvements
ARC-AGI Puzzle Generator
A group coding project at the University of Tuebingen, extending the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC-AGI) — a benchmark designed to measure general intelligence through visual pattern tasks that are intuitive for humans but challenging for AI. Our team contributed new puzzle generators, and I built a tiling/multiplication tool plus 7 original generators from scratch.
- Multiplication tool: takes any existing ARC puzzle and tiles it to create harder variants, preserving the original transformation rule
- Mirror Maze: laser pathfinding puzzle with reflective mirrors and obstacles
- Face Completion: draw a proto-face (eyes, nose) and output the completed version with a mouth, with random rotation
- Majority Mask: identify the dominant colour in a multi-colour grid and isolate it
- Compass: two concentric rings with pips — rotate the inner pip to align with the outer
- Count Edges / Color By Size: polygon and rectangle puzzles using a reusable ARC-2 hint-bar system with colour wheel and per-slot settings
Experience & Education
B.Sc. Cognitive Science
University of Tübingen
Exchange semester at NUS Singapore (Interaction Design). Specialisations in neuromodulation & neuroplasticity, ML / information theory, and HCI.
Abitur
Goethe-Gymnasium Karlsruhe
Advanced courses in Mathematics, English, and Physics. DEAR EU #ClimateOfChange debate 2021. Rowing, Green Youth Karlsruhe.
Research Assistant
Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien
Research on AI & education: study design, data analysis in R, literature reviews, and developing AI pipelines exploring how LLMs can support student engagement.
Bundesfreiwilligendienst
Heimstiftung Karlsruhe
Supported children with special educational needs in a day-care group — daily routines, learning, and conflict resolution. Independently led projects.
Lab Assistant
Unisensor Sensorsysteme GmbH
Spectral analysis of plastic samples to improve automated recycling classification systems.
Get in touch.
Got an idea, a project, or just something cool to discuss? I'd love to hear about it!
Impressum
Responsible for content
Kane Friedenhagen
Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg
Deutschland
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