Bernhard Specht

Bernhard Specht

Research Engineer

I turn hard problems into shipped products. From brain-computer interfaces to privacy-preserving ML systems and beyond — I research, build, and deliver end-to-end.

Projects

CrunchGuide

Side Project

Snap a photo of a dish. Describe a meal in your own words. CrunchGuide turns your ideas into complete recipes — with ingredients, steps, and full nutrition data.

Recipe Creation Recipe Creation
My Recipes My Recipes
Recipe Details Recipe Details
Meal Planning Meal Planning

Recipes from anything

Take a photo of something you ate, dictate a recipe from memory, or type a quick idea. CrunchGuide builds a structured recipe with ingredients, portions, and step-by-step instructions.

Complete nutrition breakdown

Every recipe comes with detailed nutrition info — powered by USDA food data. Track calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and more.

Meal planning

Drag and drop recipes into your weekly schedule. Stay on top of your eating goals without the guesswork.

Smart shopping lists

Generate shopping lists from your meal plans automatically. Check items off as you shop — nothing forgotten, nothing wasted.

Cook together

Share recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists with family or friends. Plan dinner together or split the grocery run.

Your recipe collection

Save, organize, and revisit your favorite recipes anytime. Build a personal cookbook that grows with you.

University BCI Projects

Technical University of Munich

Brain-computer interface projects from my time as a teaching assistant and working student.

PrivateBoost

Ph.D. Research

A privacy-preserving federated learning system for cross-device medical data. Raw medical data never leaves patients' mobile devices — the system uses secret sharing to enable collaborative model training without exposing individual records.

Scavenger & Nogrod

Open Source — 2018

Energy-efficient cryptocurrency miner based on proof of capacity with GPU acceleration, adopted by multiple cryptocurrencies. Nogrod validates miners' proofs and distributes rewards based on estimated disk capacity.

Education

Industrial Ph.D. — Brain-Computer Interfaces for Remote Neurological Monitoring

Myelin-H, University of Luxembourg & Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)
Mar 2023 – Present · Luxembourg
  • Funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)
  • Built a hybrid brain-computer interface for remote neurological monitoring and rehabilitation using multi-modal sensor data
  • Developed a privacy-preserving federated learning system where raw medical data never leaves patients' mobile devices

B.Sc. & M.Sc. Electrical Engineering and Information Technology

Technical University of Munich
Oct 2013 – Oct 2020 · Munich, Germany
  • M.Sc. focused on Neural Engineering, machine learning, and brain-computer interfaces
  • Master thesis with exchange at Dalian Ligong University (Dalian, China): Joint Optimization of Haptic Communication and Resource Allocation

Chinese Language Studies and Exchange — HSK6

Tongji University (Shanghai) & Nanjing University (Confucius Institute Scholarship)
Sep 2012 – Oct 2013, Sep 2017 – Jun 2018 · China

Publications

medRxiv, 2026 · Journal submission in preparation first author
Predicting Depression and Anxiety Progression in Multiple Sclerosis from Longitudinal Clinical Data Using Machine Learning
In preparation first author
Multiple Sclerosis in the Digital Health Age: Challenges and Opportunities — A Systematic Review
medRxiv, 2023 first author

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