Prof. Dr. Nadja Klein // Group Lead //
Nadja leads the research group Methods for Big Data at the Scientific Computing Center, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) since August 2024. She is also a Emmy Noether Research Group Leader as well as a member of AcademiaNet, Die Junge Akademie and the Humboldt network (by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation), among others. Nadja completed her doctoral studies in Mathematics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, before conducting a postdoc at the University of Melbourne as a Feodor-Lynen fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Afterwards she was a Professor for Statistics and Data Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin before joining KIT. |
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Nicolas Bianco // Postdoctoral Researcher //
Nicolas joined the team as a Post-Doc in September 2024 and holds both a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Statistics from the University of Padova. He continued his academic journey with the successful completion of a PhD in Statistical Sciences. During his PhD, he also spent a period as a visiting student at Queen Mary University of London. Following his doctoral studies, Nicolas joined the Statistics group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona as a postdoctoral researcher for one year. His research interests lie in Bayesian statistics for analyzing complex high-dimensional data, focusing on both theoretical and computational aspects, and experiencing interesting applications. Currently, his work centers on approximate Bayesian inference methods for local variable selection and change-point detection in spatio-temporal data analysis. |
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Guillermo Briseno-Sanchez // PhD Student //
Guillermo joined the team as a PhD student in May 2023. He studied Business economics in Hamburg (UHH) and holds a master’s degree in Applied Statistics from the University of Göttingen. His main research interests are distributional regression models for univariate and bivariate responses as well as time-to-event analysis. |
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Tim-Moritz Bündert // PhD Student //
Tim joined the lab in November 2022 as a student research assistant and in October 2023 as a PhD student. Prior, he studied Data Science and Statistics at the University of Tübingen and the Berlin University Alliance. Currently, he is working on robustness and theoretical properties of Bayesian Deep Learning involving adversarial attacks. |
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Ekin Celikkan // PhD Student //
Ekin joined the lab as a PhD student in 2022 as a part of the HEIBRiDS Graduate Program. Her research focus is on computer vision and uncertainty quantification for agricultural monitoring. She received her B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University in 2019 and completed her M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Information Technology and Computer Engineering at RWTH Aachen University in 2022. |
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Clara Hoffmann // PhD Student //
Clara joined the lab as a PhD student in February 2023. Prior, she obtained a Bachelor's in Economics from Humboldt University and a Master's in Statistics from the Berlin University Alliance. Clara is working on deep Bayesian uncertainty quantification within the DesBi project to obtain calibrated predictions for MRI scans. |
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Dingyi Lai // PhD Student //
Dingyi joined the lab as a PhD student in July 2024 as part of the DeSBi project P5. Prior to this, she obtained a Bachelor's degree in Applied Statistics from the Communication University of China and focused on Finance and Economics as an exchange student at Feng Chia University. She graduated in Statistics from the joint Master's program in Berlin in the direction of quantitative economic research and data science. Dingyi has a wide range of research interests, including causal inference, time series, machine learning, and XAI. She is currently working on the application of semi-structured distributional regression from a Bayesian perspective on the explainability of genomic prediction. |
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Aaron Lee // PhD Student //
Aaron joined the team as a PhD student in August 2024. He graduated with honours from the National University of Singapore, with a degree in Data Science and Analytics. His current research focuses on Bayesian conditional transformation models and Bayesian computational methods. |
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Benedikt Lütke Schwienhorst // PhD Student //
Benedikt joined the lab as a PhD student in November 2023 being under the co-supervision of Nadja Klein and Johannes Lederer. He obtained a Bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering from Technical University of Berlin and a Master degree in Statistics from the Berlin University Alliance. His current research focuses on the comparison of frequentist and Bayesian methods in particular with respect to robustness. |
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Victor Medina-Olivares, PhD // Postdoctoral Researcher //
Victor, a postdoctoral researcher who joined our lab in October 2022, dedicates his research to developing and applying probabilistic machine learning methods, tackling a wide array of scientific challenges. Victor earned his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, UK, with a central focus on scalable joint models for longitudinal and time-to-event data. He studied Physics, Industrial Engineering, and an MSc in Statistics and Operational Research. |
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Pallavi Mitra // PhD Student //
Pallavi joined the lab in 2023. She is working as a PhD student in cooperation with the Continental AI Lab in Berlin, focusing on safety measures for neural network pruning. Pallavi previously completed her M.Sc. in Data Science from the Berliner Hochschule für Technik in 2021. |
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Moussa Kassem Sbeyti // Postdoctoral Researcher //
Moussa joined our lab as an associated member in 2023 and later as a postdoctoral researcher in 2024. He pursued a PhD at the Technical University of Berlin while working as an AI Research Scientist at the Continental AI Lab in Berlin. His research primarily focuses on developing uncertainty-based automated labeling methods for 2D images in autonomous driving. Prior to this, Moussa earned his M.Sc. in Mechatronics Engineering from the Technical University of Darmstadt in 2021. |
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Christian Schlauch // PhD Student //
Christian joined the lab in 2022. He is working as a PhD student in cooperation with the Continental AI Lab in Berlin, focusing on Bayesian Deep Learning methods for trajectory prediction in autonomous driving. Christian previously completed his M.Sc. in Systems Engineering and Technical Cybernetics at the OvGU Magdeburg in 2022. |
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Michael Stanley Smith // Mercator Fellow //
Michael is Mercator Fellow in our Emmy Noether Research Group. He holds the Chair of Management in Econometrics at Melbourne Business School since 2007. Being a leading researcher in Bayesian statistics and business analytics, his work has been published in top academic journals in statistics, econometrics, marketing and forecasting. |
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Florian Süßer // PhD Student //
Florian joined the lab in July 2024 as a PhD student. Being a M. Sc. psychologist by education and having worked in e-commerce for 6 years, he now focuses on multilevel models, conformal prediction and Bayesian statistics. |
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Jan Wenkel // PhD Student //
Jan joined the lab as a PhD student in October 2024. He holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Copenhagen and an MSc in Applied Mathematics from ETH Zürich. His current research focus is Bayesian causal inference. |