Prof. Dr. Nikolaus A. Adams is a full professor and Chair of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), affiliated with the TUM School of Engineering and Design. Born in 1963, he holds a doctorate from TUM (1993) and habilitation from ETH Zurich (1999). His research focuses on numerical methods, turbulent flows, microfluidics, and multiphase systems. He has held leadership roles, including Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering since 2023 and Vice Dean (2015–2016). Education: PhD from TUM (1993), habilitation from ETH Zurich (1999) Research interests include aerodynamics, fluid-structure interaction, and numerical techniques for compressible flows. His work spans high-speed aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Awards include ERC Advanced Grants (GENUFASD 2023, NANOSHOCK 2015), the Gordon Bell Prize (2013), and Fellow of the American Physical Society (2011). Grants and leadership: Spokesperson of DFG SFB/TRR 40 (2008–2020), co-author of 'Large-Eddy Simulation for Compressible Flows' (2009), and editorial roles in J. Comput. Phys.
Christopher Morris is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at RWTH Aachen University and a DFG Emmy Noether fellow. He leads the Learning on Graphs (LoG) research group, focusing on machine learning methods for structured data, particularly graph neural networks. His work bridges machine learning, computer science theory, and discrete mathematics, addressing challenges in generalization, expressivity, and algorithmic efficiency. Education: PhD in Computer Science from TU Dortmund University (advised by Petra Mutzel and Kristian Kersting), postdoctoral research at Mila - Quebec AI Institute (Siamak Ravanbakhsh) and McGill University, and Polytechnique Montréal (Andrea Lodi). Research interests emphasize graph machine learning, including generalization theory, combinatorial optimization, and scalable graph embeddings. Notable contributions include analyzing Weisfeiler-Leman algorithms' impact on GNNs' expressivity and generalization (VC dimension connections). Awards: DFG Emmy Noether Fellowship. Supervises six PhD students in Aachen. Active in teaching, offering courses on graph-based machine learning foundations and applications since 2022. Labs/Teams: LoG group at RWTH Aachen, collaborating with institutions like Mila and Polytechnique Montréal. Erdős number 3 through Petra Mutzel’s collaboration network.
Aleksandar Bojchevski is a full professor of Computer Science at the University of Cologne, leading the Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Lab (TAIL). His research focuses on developing robust, interpretable, and privacy-preserving machine learning models, particularly graph neural networks (GNNs). The lab emphasizes trustworthiness in high-stakes applications through methods that handle noisy, adversarial, or anomalous data. Bojchevski holds a PhD and PostDoc from the Technical University of Munich, advised by Stephan Günnemann. Previously, he was faculty at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. His work bridges theory and practice, addressing adversarial robustness, uncertainty quantification, and scalable GNN techniques. Research interests include: robustness certification for GNNs, conformal prediction, adversarial attack analysis, and privacy-aware machine learning. His lab actively collaborates with RWTH Aachen and organizes events like the Learning on Graphs Meet Up. Recent achievements include a teaching award for the Machine Learning lecture (SS 24) and NeurIPS 2024 acceptance of SVFT: Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning with Singular Vectors . Open positions are available in his group focusing on trustworthy ML topics. Key labs/teams: Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence Lab (TAIL), Center for Data and Simulation Science (CDS) as a core scientist.
Günter Rote is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Freie Universität Berlin, specifically within the Theoretical Computer Science group (Arbeitsgruppe Theoretische Informatik). He holds a formal academic title of Professor Dr. and is affiliated with the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. His research focuses on theoretical computer science, computational geometry, algorithms, and discrete mathematics. Key research interests include geometric algorithms, optimization problems (e.g., shortest paths, traveling salesman problems), and algorithm design for parallel computing systems. His work spans topics such as systolic arrays, convex hulls, and combinatorial optimization. Rote’s contributions include foundational studies on computational geometry problems, algorithmic complexity, and practical applications in energy equity and infrastructure design. Publications highlight contributions to solving extremal equations, polygon transformations, and the quadratic assignment problem. He has been active in academic leadership, mentoring students, and contributing to computational science communities. His email is rote@inf.fu-berlin.de, and his office is located at Takustraße 9 in Berlin.
Todd Millstein is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and served as Department Chair from 2022–2025. He is also an Amazon Scholar and a co-founder and former Chief Scientist of Intentionet (now at AWS). His research focuses on making software systems more reliable, particularly through network verification and programming language techniques. He pioneered the Batfish network configuration analyzer, which is used by AWS, Oracle Cloud, and dozens of companies, and received the ACM SIGCOMM Networking Systems Award (2025) for this work. His recent publications span probabilistic programming, network reliability, and interactive program verification, including papers at PLDI 2024 (on bit blasting probabilistic programs), NSDI 2024 (on behavioral testing of BGP), and HotNets 2024 (on network layering). Todd has received prestigious awards such as an NSF CAREER Award , a Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award , and multiple best paper awards at PLDI, OOPSLA, and SIGCOMM. He has advised Ph.D. students like Ana Brendel and Poorva Garg , and teaches courses such as CS30 (Principles of Computing), CS231 (Types and Programming Languages), and CS239 (Current Topics in PL and Systems). His professional roles include Program Chair for OOPSLA 2014 and ECOOP 2018, and committee member for numerous conferences including PLDI , SPLASH , and LAFI .
Prof. Dr. Harald Tauchmann is a Professor of Health Economics at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), where he has held a faculty position since 2013. He is affiliated with the School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, specifically within the Department of Economics. Prof. Tauchmann also participates in multiple research focus areas at FAU, including 'Insurance and Risk' and 'Work in Transition,' demonstrating his interdisciplinary approach to health economics. Prof. Tauchmann received his education at Heidelberg University and the University of Manchester, UK, where he studied economics, political science, and sociology. He graduated in 1998 and completed his doctorate at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Economics (University of Heidelberg) in 2003. Prior to joining FAU, he worked as a research associate at the Rhineland-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research (RWI) in Essen from 2003 to 2012 and headed a junior research group at the health economics research center CINCH at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research expertise lies in empirical health economics, with a particular emphasis on health insurance choice and competition, as well as individual health behavior. He has made significant contributions to understanding obesity, health shocks, mental health care payment systems, and thyroid diagnostics through his extensive publication record. His methodological work includes developing specialized Stata modules for econometric analysis, which have been widely adopted by researchers in the field. Prof. Tauchmann's scholarly work demonstrates a consistent focus on applying rigorous econometric methods to pressing health policy questions. His research portfolio shows particular strength in causal analysis of health behavior, especially regarding obesity interventions, health insurance market dynamics, and the economic consequences of health shocks. His recent publications (including several forthcoming in 2025) indicate continued scholarly productivity and relevance to current health policy debates. From March 2021 to April 2022, Prof. Tauchmann served as chairman of the German Society for Health Economics, highlighting his leadership and recognition within the national health economics community. His email contact is harald.tauchmann@fau.de for professional inquiries.
Bruce Allen is the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Hannover, Germany, where he also heads the Observational Relativity and Cosmology department. He holds dual academic appointments as Honorary Professor of Physics at Leibniz Universität Hannover and Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. His career spans over three decades in gravitational physics research, with a leadership role in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration from 1997 to 2018. Dr. Allen's research focuses on gravitational wave detection and data analysis, early universe cosmology, de Sitter space, curved-space quantum field theory, cosmic strings, inflationary models of the early universe, and gravitational radiation emission by cosmic strings. His work extends to large-scale cluster computing and public distributed computing projects like Einstein@Home, which has led to significant discoveries in gravitational wave astronomy. His recent publications demonstrate expertise in pulsar timing arrays, Hellings-Downs correlation analysis, and optimization of computational methods for gravitational wave detection. Allen's scientific contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious awards including the Richard A. Isaacson Award (2020), the Bruno Rossi Prize (2017), the Princess of Asturias Award (2017), and the Special Breakthrough Prize (2016), all shared with the LIGO team for groundbreaking gravitational wave discoveries. He is also an Elected Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics, UK. As a research leader, Allen has secured approximately $10 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation (1987-2018) and has mentored numerous students and researchers in gravitational physics. His work on Einstein@Home has engaged the public in scientific discovery through distributed computing, leading to several important astrophysical findings including gamma-ray pulsar discoveries.
Prof. Dr. Martin Burger is a leading scientist at DESY and a Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Universität Hamburg, where he leads the Computational Imaging Group. His research bridges applied mathematics, imaging sciences, and machine learning, with a focus on inverse problems, mathematical modeling, and partial differential equations. He has held professorial positions at Universität Münster and FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg prior to his current dual appointment. Full Professor, Universität Hamburg (2023–present) Leading Scientist, DESY, Hamburg (2023–present) Full Professor, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (2018–2023) Full Professor, Universität Münster (2006–2018) His research interests include inverse problems, variational regularization, optimal transport, kinetic models, and mathematical modeling in biology and social sciences. He has made significant contributions to imaging reconstruction, sparse neural networks, and the analysis of transformer architectures. His work often integrates theoretical analysis with computational methods, influencing both pure and applied mathematics. The most recent articles reflect a strong trend toward interdisciplinary applications, combining deep learning with PDE-based modeling, analyzing social and biological systems via kinetic and mean-field models, and advancing mathematical imaging through graph-based and optimal transport methods. His publications span high-impact venues in applied mathematics and computational science. Calderon Prize, Inverse Problems International Association (IPIA) ERC Consolidator Grant (2014) Invited speaker at ECM (2021), ICM (2022), and ICIAM (2023) Editor-in-Chief, European Journal of Applied Mathematics (since 2017) Prof. Burger has supervised numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, many of whom appear as co-authors in his publications. His research is supported by major grants, including funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). He is actively involved in collaborative projects across mathematics, physics, and engineering disciplines. He leads the Computational Imaging Group at DESY, fostering a collaborative environment for developing novel mathematical tools in imaging science. The group works on both theoretical foundations and practical implementations, contributing to advancements in tomography, machine learning, and data analysis.
Maks Ovsjanikov is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at École Polytechnique, France , and a Visiting Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. His research focuses on mathematically principled approaches for geometric data analysis and synthesis, including learning on surface meshes, 3D point clouds, and graphs. Key Collaborations: Google DeepMind, Sanofi, Dassault Systèmes Research Themes: Non-rigid shape matching, 3D reconstruction, transfer learning, learning on geometric data, functional maps, deep learning for scientific discovery Recent Article Trends emphasize geometric deep learning, with publications at top venues like SIGGRAPH Asia, ICCV, and CVPR. Topics include surface reconstruction, functional maps, 3D keypoint detection, and diffusion models for shape matching. Scientific Honors include: ERC Consolidator Grant (VEGA Project, 2023) ERC Starting Grant (2017) ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Test-of-Time Award Best Paper Awards at 3DV 2021 and 3DV 2022 Student Advisees have received prestigious awards, such as the IP Paris Best PhD Thesis Award (Souhaib Attaiki, 2023) and GdR IG-RV Runner-Up (Nicolas Donati, 2024). The GeomeriX Team at École Polytechnique drives his group's research, supported by the VEGA and AIGRETTE projects.
Professor Steffen Dereich is a leading researcher in mathematical stochastics at the University of Münster's Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, where he serves as Professor at the Institute of Mathematical Stochastics. He is an active investigator in the Mathematics Münster cluster of excellence, contributing significantly to the fields of stochastic processes and machine learning theory. His primary research interests span Stochastic Processes , Machine Learning , Deep Learning , Complex Networks , and Stochastic Analysis . Dereich has developed a unique research program that bridges classical probability theory with modern machine learning challenges, particularly focusing on the mathematical foundations of optimization algorithms used in deep learning. His work on stochastic gradient descent methods, especially the Adam optimizer, has provided crucial theoretical insights into convergence properties and optimization landscapes. The 15 most recent publications reveal a strong trend toward mathematical analysis of deep learning, with approximately 70% of his work focusing on neural network optimization, convergence analysis, and theoretical foundations of machine learning algorithms. The remaining publications continue his earlier work on complex networks, stochastic processes, and branching structures, demonstrating how he has successfully connected his foundational work in probability with cutting-edge machine learning research. Professor Dereich actively supervises PhD students and maintains productive collaborations, particularly with Arnulf Jentzen and Sebastian Kassing. His research group at Münster has secured significant funding through the Mathematics Münster cluster, supporting multiple projects including T8: Random discrete structures and their limits, and T10: Deep learning and surrogate methods. His teaching portfolio includes advanced courses on Probability Theory, Stochastic Analysis, Markov Chains, and specialized seminars on Machine Learning and Financial Mathematics, reflecting his dual expertise in theoretical mathematics and applied data science.
Gregory D. Erhardt is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Kentucky and serves as Associate Director of the T-SCORE Center, a multi-university consortium advancing public transit strategies. He holds a PhD from University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, with prior experience in transportation planning across public and private sectors. His research focuses on transportation forecasting, big data applications, and evidence-based policy decisions, particularly addressing the impacts of emerging mobility technologies like ride-hailing on urban systems. Erhardt’s work emphasizes improving forecast accuracy and advocating for gender equity in engineering. He has been recognized with awards such as the Transportation Research Board’s Certificate of Appreciation and the Chan Wui & Yunyin Rising Star Fellowship. Education: PhD (University College London), M.S. (Northwestern University), B.S. (Cornell University). His research integrates activity-based travel models with big data to evaluate infrastructure investments and mobility trends. Key projects include analyzing public transit ridership decline, ride-hailing effects on congestion, and TNC impacts on urban transportation systems. Current initiatives include developing multi-agent simulation frameworks for on-demand transit systems. As a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the TUM Institute for Advanced Study, he collaborates on travel behavior modeling. His advocacy for diversity includes leading 'Advocates and Allies' training to promote gender equity in engineering. Erhardt’s publications span journals like Transportation Research Part A and Science Advances , with a focus on policy-relevant transportation analytics.
Maximilian Egger is a Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Communications Engineering under Prof. Antonia Wachter-Zeh at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research focuses on distributed machine learning, privacy-preserving computing, and information theory. He holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (2022, TUM) and a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering (2020). He has conducted research stays at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (2024) and Imperial College London (2023). Egger has received several awards, including the DAAD Scholarship (2023) and the VDE Award Bavaria (2020). His work emphasizes secure federated learning, Byzantine-resilient systems, and efficient distributed algorithms. He is affiliated with the Chair of Coding and Cryptography and actively contributes to advancements in decentralized learning systems. Recent publications highlight breakthroughs in privacy preservation, channel capacity estimation, and scalable federated edge learning.
Michio Sugeno is a distinguished Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology's Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Department of Computational Intelligence. With a career spanning over four decades, he has established himself as a leading figure in fuzzy systems and computational intelligence. His research interests encompass Fuzzy Systems, Computational Intelligence, Nonlinear Control, Choquet Integral theory, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Linguistic Computing. Sugeno's work has fundamentally shaped modern fuzzy control theory, particularly through his development of the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model which has become a standard approach in industrial applications. Analysis of his recent publications reveals a continued focus on piecewise nonlinear modeling, stability analysis of fuzzy systems, and the application of Choquet calculus to various computational problems. His work demonstrates a consistent trajectory from theoretical foundations to practical implementations in control systems and intelligent computing. IEEE Pioneer Award in Fuzzy Systems IFSA Fellow Emanuel R. Piore Award Sugeno has mentored numerous researchers who have become prominent in their own right, including Tadanari Taniguchi, Luka Eciolaza, and Anh-Tu Nguyen. His laboratory has been instrumental in developing novel approaches to nonlinear control systems using piecewise bilinear models and fuzzy logic. Current research directions include brain-computer interfaces using EEG analysis and the development of everyday language computing systems that enable more natural human-computer interaction.
Hannes Schammann is Professor of Political Science with a focus on migration policy at the University of Hildesheim , where he leads the Migration Policy Research Group since 2018. His work bridges academic research and practical implementation through the Research and Transfer Center for Migration Policy , addressing migration, integration, and refugee policy challenges. In January 2025, he joined the German Council of Experts on Integration and Migration (SVR) as a scientific advisor. Research Focus: Schammann specializes in local authorities' scope for action in refugee-related migration, national migration policy analysis, and educational integration aspects. He co-authored the textbook Migration Policy (2021) and contributes to international journals like Journal of Refugee Studies and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies . Key Projects: He leads third-party funded initiatives including Match'In (algorithmic asylum seeker distribution), SOLDISK (solidarity discourses in migration), Country.Home.Future (rural integration), When Mayors Make Migration Policy (municipal EU influence). Expert Engagements: Schammann serves on editorial boards including Zeitschrift für Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung , and participates in advisory roles for institutions like the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs and Robert Bosch Foundation . He also engages in public discourse through media appearances in Deutschlandfunk , ARD , and SWR regarding migration challenges.
Hao Liu is a researcher affiliated with institutions like Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beihang University , and Stanford University . His work spans Computer Science , Artificial Intelligence , and Robotics . Key affiliations: National Space Science Center (Beijing), School of Astronautics (Beihang), Key Laboratory of Pervasive Computing (Tsinghua) Research interests include Machine Learning , Image Processing , Graph Neural Networks , and Wireless Communication Optimization His recent publications focus on: Advanced control systems for fuzzy models Medical imaging via hyperspectral analysis Transformer-based approaches in NLP and vision Quantum-safe and edge computing protocols
