Scientists

Jan Philipp Albrecht

Jan Philipp is a PhD student in the Max Delbrueck Center for moluecular medicine. He is a trained Bioinformation B.Sc. and M.Sc from the Freie Universität Berlin.

He is interested in the following research fields and domains:

  • machine learning for biomedical imaging
  • worflows for transfer learning and domain adaption

He contributes to subproject A5 and and team T2.

Jonathan Bader

Jonathan is a PhD student in the Distributed and Operating Systems (DOS)
group in the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, TU
Berlin.
He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Information Systems Management from the
Technical University of Berlin.

Jonathan’s research is focused on:

  • Resource Management
  • Big Data
  • Scientific Workflows
  • Distributed systems

In FONDA, Jonathan contributes to subproject B1 and team T4.

Jonathan’s publications can be found here.

Soeren Becker

Soeren is a PhD student in the Distributed and Operating Systems (DOS) group at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, TU
Berlin. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Berlin.

Soeren`s current research is focused on:

  • Distributed Systems
  • Decentralized and self-adaptive Edge Computing
  • Resource Management and peer-to-peer-based scheduling

In FONDA, Soeren contributes to S1 and team T4.

Soeren’s publications can be found here.

Sophie Beckmann

Sophie is a PhD student in the Visual Computing group in the department of Computer Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She has a background in Biomedical Engineering with a B.Sc. from Technical University Ilmenau and a M.Sc. from Chalmers University of Technology.

Sophie`s current research is focused on:

  • Multi-View Reconstruction
  • Macroscopic Imaging
  • Scientific Workflows in 3D Computer Vision

In FONDA, Sophie contributes to subproject B2.

Vasilis Bountris

Vasilis is a PhD student in the WBI group in the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt University of Berlin. He received a joint B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Vasilis’ research interests include:

  • Scalable Provenance Management
  • Scientific Workflows
  • Distributed Systems

In FONDA, Vasilis contributes to subproject S1 and team T2.

Vasilis’ publications can be found here.

Kedi Cao

Kedi is a PhD student supervised jointly by Dr. Birte Kehr in Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT-Regensburg) and Dr. Ulf Leser at Humboldt University, Berlin. She has a background in Quantitative Systems Biology with an M.Sc. from Northwestern University and B.Sc. from Virginia Tech.

Kedi’s research is focused on:

  • Non-reference-variant calling workflows
  • Interactive workflow/human-in-the-loop
  • Bioinformatic data analysis and visualization

Kedi contributes to FONDA subproject A6.

Nour Elfaramawy

Nour is a PhD student in the DBIS group in the Department of Computer Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Information Systems from Helwan University and an M.Sc. in Intelligent Adaptive Systems from the University of Hamburg.

Nour’s research is focused on:

  • Interactive and exploratory workflows
  • Distributed systems
  • Algorithms for exploratory data analysis
  • Reproducibility and reusability of scientific workflows

Nour contributes to FONDA subproject A6.

Nour’s publications can be found here.

Sarah Kleest-Meißner

Sarah is a PhD student in the Logic group at the Department of Computer Science, Humboldt University of Berlin (HUB). She holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Sarah’s research is focused on:

  • Database theory
  • Event query languages and query discovery
  • Complexity theory
  • Logic

In FONDA, Sarah contributes to subproject A1.

Sarah’s publications can be found here.

Martin Kuban

Martin is a PhD student in the solid-state theory group of the Physics Department of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Physics from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

His research is focused on computational materials science, specifically on density-functional theory, machine learning, and the superposition of both.

His current work includes similarity measures for analysis of large materials science databases and data quality assessment.

Martin contributes to FONDA subproject A3.

Svetlana Kulagina

Svetlana Kulagina is a PhD student in the Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems group of the Institute of Computer Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She holds a diploma in Computer Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Svetlana’s research is focused on:

  • Multi-objective, multi-constraint algorithms for scheduling
  • Scheduling and load balancing in heterogeneous distributed networks
  • Graph properties of workflows that relate to their scheduling

Svetlana contributes to subproject B1 and group T1.

Svetlana’s publications can be found here.

Fabian Lehmann

Fabian Lehmann is a Ph.D. student in computer science at the Knowledge Management in Bioinformatics Lab at the Humboldt University of Berlin and holds an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Information Systems Management from the Technical University of Berlin.
Fabian is fascinated by any complex, distributed system. His research focuses on improving scientific workflow engines. In particular, he concentrates on scheduling and data management. Therefore, he works closely with the Earth Observation Lab at the Humboldt University of Berlin to understand real-world requirements.

In FONDA, Fabian contributes to the subproject B5 and the team T2 and T4.

Fabian’s publications can be found here.

Katarzyna Ewa Lewińska

Katarzyna is a postdoctoral researcher in the Earth Observation Lab in the Geography Department at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She received her master diploma in Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing from the University of Warsaw, and a PhD in Engineering Science, Surveying and Geoinformation from the University of Technology in Graz.


She is a remote sensing scientist interested in exploring and understanding changes occurring in the natural environment, with a particular focus on climate change related phenomena. In her analyses, Katarzyna uses mainly optical remotely sensed data and especially enjoys working with long time series of observations that allow to study Land Use and Land Cover changes over the past 40 years.

Katarzyna contributes to FONDA’s subproject B5.

Ansgar Lößer

Ansgar Lößer is a PhD student in the Communication Networks group of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at TU Darnstadt. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from HWR
Berlin and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Humboldt University of
Berlin.

Ansgar’s research focuses on:

  • Distributed systems
  • IO in scientific workflows
  • Network modelling and optimization of scientific workflows

He contributes to subproject B4 and and team T4.

Ninon De Mecquenem

Ninon De Mecquenem is a PhD student in computer science in the Knowledge Management in Bioinformatics group at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She has a B.sc. in Biology from the University of Perpignan and a M.Sc. of bioinformatics from the University of Bordeaux.
She is interested in optimizing the I/O of bioinformatics workflows, with a focus on RNAseq workflows.

In FONDA, Ninon contributes to the subproject A2 and the teams T1 and T4.

Ninon’s publications can be found here.

Rafael Moczalla

Rafael is a PhD student in the Data Engineering Systems group of the Digital Engineering Faculty at Hasso Plattner Institute. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Rafael’s research is focused on:

  • Distributed and decentralized stream processing
  • (Stream) query processing and optimizations
  • Benchmarking stream processing engines

Rafael contributes to subproject B6, team T4, and serves on the FONDA board.

Somayeh Mohammadi

Somayeh Mohammadi

Somayeh Mohammadi is a PostDoc researcher in the ABI group in the
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Freie University of Berlin.
She received a B.S. degree in Software Engineering from Razi University in Kermanshah, Iran, an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in the same course from Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Somayeh’s research interests include:

  • Distributed Computing
  • Scientific Workflows
  • Mathematical Optimization
  • Data Science

Somayeh contributes to FONDA subproject A2.

Sebastian Müller

Sebastian is a PhD student at the Software Engineering chair of the
Department of Computer Science at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He
holds both a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Sebastian’s current research is focused on:

  • Metamorphic-Testing
  • Automatic Test Case Generation
  • Grammar-based Fuzzing
  • Recommender Systems in Data Sciences
  • Explainability of Program Behavior

Sebastian is conducting his research as part of FONDA’s sub-project A3.

Sebastian’s publications can be found here.

Mario Sänger

Mario is a PhD student in the group “Human-Computer Interaction for Scientific Software” in the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt University of Berlin. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science from the Berlin School of Economics and the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Mario’s research is focused on:

  • Natural Language Processing
  • Biomedical Text Mining
  • Large Language Models for Scientific Workflows

In FONDA, he cooperated with Prof. Dr. Thomas Kosch in an exploration project which investigates the potential of ChatGPT to support users in designing and implementing scientific workflows.

Mario’s publications can be found here.

Rebecca Sattler

Rebecca is a PhD student in the DBIS group at the Department of Computer Science, Humboldt University of Berlin (HUB). She holds a BA from HUB majoring in Mathematics (minor in Computer Science) and an M.Sc. in Computational Science from the University of Potsdam.

Rebecca’s research interests include:

  • Event query languages
  • Algorithms for event query discovery
  • Event-based validation of workflow execution

In FONDA, Rebecca contributes to subproject A1.

Rebecca’s publications can be found here.

Marcel Schloz

Marcel is a PhD student in the Structural Research Lab at the
Department of Physics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He
holds a B.Sc. from Hildesheim University majoring in Physics
and a M.Sc. in Optical Sciences from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Marcel’s current research is focused on:

  • phase reconstruction algorithms
  • electron ptychography
  • machine learning supported, automated and autonomous microscopy

Marcel is conducting his research as part of FONDA’s sub-project B2.

Marcel’s publications can be found here.

Marc-André Schulz

Marc is a research associate at the Machine Learning in Clinical Neuroimaging Lab at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. With a background in physics, they shifted their focus to machine learning and deep learning, ultimately specializing in the development of machine learning methodologies for personalized psychiatry. Marc is particularly focused on identifying the scenarios in which deep learning may not be the optimal approach in biomedicine, as well as determining the factors that govern its applicability and efficiency.

Marc’s research interests include:

  • Representation learning and transfer learning for brain images and healthcare tabular data
  • Domain-specific data augmentation strategies
  • Applicability limits of deep learning and machine learning in biomedicine
  • Explainability of machine learning models for brain images

    • In FONDA, Marc contributes to subproject A5.

    Marc’s recent publications within the CRC FONDA can be found here.

Jan Arne Sparka

Arne is a PhD student at the Software Engineering chair of the Mathematics and Natural Science Faculty at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Arne’s research is focused on:

  • Semantically correct grammar-based fuzzing
  • Control operations for workflows
  • Automatic test case generation

Arne contributes to subproject B6.

Daniel T. Speckhard

Daniel is a PhD student in the solid-state theory group of the Physics Department of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering respectively from Stanford University. Prior to his PhD studies, he worked full-time as a software engineer at Google and AI resident at Google[X].

His research focuses on improving machine learning models for materials science data. Specifically, he is interested in how low-precision density functional theory simulations in materials science can be combined with machine learning models to predict expensive simulation results.

Daniel contributes to FONDA subproject A3.

Joel Witzke

Joel is a PhD student in the Distributed Algorithms department at Zuse
Institute Berlin (ZIB). He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from HWR
Berlin and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Humboldt University of
Berlin.

Joel’s research focuses on:

  • Distributed systems
  • IO in scientific workflows
  • Network modelling and optimization of scientific workflows

He contributes to subproject B4 and and team T2.

Anh Duc Vu

Duc is a PhD student in the department of Computer Science at Humboldt University of Berlin. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Duc’s research interests include:

  • Automated Testing and Debugging
  • Interpreting and Explaining Systems
  • Validity and Trustworthiness

In FONDA, Duc contributes to subproject B3.

David Frantz

David was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Earth Observation Lab at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Geography Department. He holds a Diploma in Applied Environmental Sciences, and a PhD in Remote Sensing.

His research concentrates on how to “go from data to information” tailored for a wide range of environmentally centered research and monitoring needs. This particularly includes the preprocessing of operational EO data archives to analysis ready data, their management in data cubes, subsequent processing via data reduction, interpolation, time series analysis, and data integration with complementary data sources, as well as data analysis based on statistics and machine learning.

David contributed to subproject B5 and left FONDA in Autumn 2021 following an appointment to Assistant Professor for Geoinformatics – Spatial Data Science at Trier University.

David’s publications can be found here.