After having nearly 3 awesome years at the TNT, I moved to the institute of AI on July 1st 2022. Please check out my new website.
Mission Statement:
In recent years, AI made impressive results in different applications possible, e.g., in computer vision, natural language processing or game playing. These breakthroughs show how AI will influence and change our daily lives in many fields. With the advent of deep learning and also traditional AI methods, such as AI planning, SAT solving or evolutionary algorithms, a multitude of different techniques are available these days. However, applying these techniques is challenging and even experienced AI developers are faced with several difficult design decisions, such as which algorithms to apply and how to set their corresponding hyperparameters. Unfortunately, the performance and thus the success of AI systems strongly depend on these small but important design decisions. To make AI easy-to-use for more users (even for those without a strong background in AI), we develop automated machine learning (AutoML) methods, which address many different research questions, such as: (i) how to predict the best algorithm for a given input? (ii) how to efficiently search for well-performing hyperparameter settings of an algorithm? (iii) how to efficiently analyze the performance of algorithms and their inputs? Finding solutions to such problems will lead to a democratization of AI which will unleash the true potential of AI.
Current research focus and projects (as of 2022)
Short CV:
since Oct 2019: Professor of machine learning at the Leibniz University of Hannover
2014-2019: Postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Freiburg with focus on AutoML
2015: PhD in computer science at the University of Potsdam (summa cum laude) with focus on algorithm selection and configuration
2013: Co-Founder of the research network COSEAL (since 2018 advisory board member of COSEAL)
2010: Master of Science in computer science at the University of Potsdam
2008: Bachelor of Science in computer science at the University of Potsdam
2005: High school graduation (Abitur) in Berlin
Selected Awards:
2020: 3rd place(*) at the official leaderboard and 1st place at the warmstart friendly leaderboard at the BBO-Challenge at NeurIPS'20 (* after fixing a minor bug)
2018: Winner of 2nd AutoML challenge::PAKDD2018 with aad_freibug and PoSH Auto-sklearn
2016: Winner of ChaLearn AutoML challenge "AutoML 5" with aad_freibug and auto-sklearn
2015: Winner of ICON Challenge on algorithm selection with AutoFolio (track: Par10)
2013: Winner of Configurable SAT Solver challenge 2013 with the Potassco team and clasp (tracks: crafted and random)
2012: Winner of SAT Challenge 2012 with the Potassco team and clasp (track: hard combinatorial)
2011: Winner of Answer Set Programming Competition with the Potassco team and claspfolio (track: NP-Problems)
2009: Leopold-von-Buch-Bachelor-Award (Best Bachelor in Natural Sciences 2009 at the University of Potsdam)
