About me#
Who am I#
I am a researcher and programmer with a passion for geometrical methods especially folding and unfolding in machine learning and robotics. My interests are computational cognition, robotics, bioinformatics, machine learning and data science. I am an experienced Pythonista, wannabe Rustacean (currently working on my first projects) and have worked with TypeScript(Angular), C/C++, Matlab in the past. Always eager to try out new stuff, I have fortunately been given the opportunity to do so plenty over years during my time in academia and industry: 3D modelling with Blender, Typesetting with \(\LaTeX\), 3D rendering with threejs, static website generators, micro controllers and so many more.
I put a big emphasis on best practices and coding standards and in general, I love teaching & explaining stuff. My blog is my latest attempt at doing so.
Outside the digital world, I spend most of my free time with my family. I also try to get rid of the more-than-a-few extra pounds gained during the years of pandemic by finally reviving my old love for the Capoeira. I love listening to music and do have some unsolicited recommendations: The amazing Dubioza Kolektiv, Costo Rico, Oquestrada, Naziré … just to name a few. Don’t ask me for reading advice though for I am not much of a reader but if you do, I (rather) recently read and enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s “Norse Mythology” (entertaining!) and Guy Deutscher’s “The unfolding of language”—the latter of which left a great impression on me and left me wondering if are the computational models for the unfolding process.
Career#
Alternatively, this is a more formal description of myself (warning: back patting included):
I am a senior research scientist with experience in team leadership and project management. Being a machine learning (ML) researcher by trade, I have worked in the fields of robotics, behavior modeling, computer vision, scene and action recognition, data science and anomaly detection for cyber security for more than ten years. I am passionate about science and continue to contribute to fundamental research on robotics inspired by neuroscience as a honorary guest researcher.
I am an adept and versatile developer (Python, C++, TypeScript) passionate about clean coding standards and quality assurance especially in scientific contexts. My curiosity for novel technologies helps me select and adapt the right technologies to solve problems or, if necessary, develop entirely novel approaches. This allowed me to manage projects that provide full-stack solutions to integrate ML into backend services and client-facing applications.
Not only do I work well alone, but I consider myself to be team player and I led international, multicultural research groups (IPMA certified). I love traveling and learning new languages, and am proficient in German and English, fluent in Spanish and I know some basic French and Portuguese. As a Staff Data Science Consultant at BlueYonder, I currently implement novel technology for demand forecasting and replenishment for international customers.
Prior to BlueYonder, I was working as a freelancer, designing and implementing architectures for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for diverse industries such as cybersecurity and health care working on. For my clients, I designed and implemented AI architectures for behavioral-based authentication, scene and action recognition, and detection of abnormality in the context of Cyber Security and Ambient Intelligence.
Before joining the industry, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the at the FZI
Research Center for Information Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology (KIT), a nonprofit research institution for technology transfer. In
this capacity, I led a research group working on the Human Brain Project (HBP),
a large-scale and long-term prestige research effort funded by the European
Commission with the goal to better understand the human brain and derive novel,
brain-inspired technology for robotics. As a science coordinator, I connected
and synchronized international research teams within the project and organized
workshops on international conferences. I also contributed to multiple industry
projects including an award-winning CAD application realized with web-based 3D
technologies and successfully acquired new projects. I concluded this position
with the successful acquisition of funding for a national research project on
novel computer vision algorithms for depth perception and reactive motion
planning using spiking neural networks, and voluntarily contribute to this
research until today.
I received my PhD for my work on Machine
Learning for Robotics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in one of
the most renowned research groups on humanoid robotics and computer science.
There, I invented highly efficient algorithms for learning body models from
observation that are suitable for robot control as well as action and person
recognition.
During my academic career, I published over 30 scientific articles, published in renowned journals, and presented at international conferences, and won four best paper awards.
Curriculum#
Apr. 2020—Today
Staff Data Science Consultant
BlueYonder GmbH
Karlsruhe, Germany
Sept. 2017—Today
Consultant for AI/ML Research and Implementation
Freelancer
Feb. 2018—Today
Honorary Guest scientist
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik
Research Center for Information Technology
Karlsruhe, Germany
Dec. 2014—Feb.2018
Project manager “The Human Brain Project”
Post-Doc
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik
Research Center for Information Technology
Karlsruhe, Germany
2007—Dec. 2014
Graduate student (Dr.-Ing.)
Post-Doc
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Karlsruhe, Germany
2000—2007
Diploma in computer science (Dipl.-Inform.)
Student research assistant (Medical augmented reality & Humanoid robotics)
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
formerly University of Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe, Germany