Our first speakers 2023

Jonas Andrulis started developing software as a teenager and quickly developed a fascination for mathematics and structures. After studying industrial engineering at the KIT in Karlsruhe and a thesis on Bayesian networks, he worked as a consultant in the field of AI and modeling. active. He successfully founded two AI software companies: The first to plan and optimize of logistics, the second to train and validate human-in-the-loop Deep Learning Algorithms to optimize the interaction between humans and machines. After three years as Engineering Manager for AI research in Apple's Special Projects Group and later Siri, he founded in 2019 again founded Aleph Alpha in Heidelberg, Germany, the third AI startup. Since then, Aleph Alpha has raised a total of 28 mil. Euros raised from some of Europe's top deep tech investors with the goal of establish independent top AI research and run enabling technology for a new kind of AI value creation process.

Joanna Bryson is expert in intelligence — both natural and artificial. With degrees in Social and Computer Sciences from Chicago, Edinburgh and MIT, her scientific research appears in venues from reddit to Science, and her policy voice is heard in the UN, EU, CoE, OSCE, OECD and GPAI.

Wolfgang Hildesheim studied high-energy physics, worked at CERN and DESY, and then served as executive vice president for global sales and marketing for a family-owned company in the field of Big Data and Communication Intelligence. In 2007, he joined IBM Technology, where he was first responsible for the Automotive, Aerospace and High-Tech Practice and then for the Big Data Industry Solution Business in Europe. Since 2012, he has been responsible for building and growing IBM's Watson, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence business in Europe in with a focus on DACH. Wolfgang Hildesheim regularly speaks at conferences, publishes on the topic of AI and is a member of national AI commissions, as well as on the board of the AK KI at Bitkom.

Antonio Krüger is CEO and scientific director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (DFKI) and head of the department “Cognitive Assistants” at DFKI. He is a full professor for Computer Science at Saarland University (since 2009), Head of the Ubiquitous Media Technology Lab and scientific director of the Innovative Retail Laboratory (IRL) at DFKI. Prof. Krueger is an internationally renowned expert on Man-Machine-Interaction and Artificial Intelligence. In 2010 he has established the Mediainformatics study programme at the Saarland University and directs it to this day. Antonio is a co-founder of the Saarbrücken-based technology company Eyeled GmbH, which focuses on the development of mobile and ubiquitous information systems. Many of his research findings have found their way into applications in retail and other industrial domains. From 2004 to 2009 he was a professor of computer science and geoinformatics at the University of Münster and acted as the managing director of the institute for geoinformatics. He studied Computer Science and Economics at Saarland University and finished his Ph.D in 1999 as a member of the Saarbrücken graduate school of „Cognitive Science“. Antonio has published more than 200 scientific articles and papers in internationally recognized journals and conferences and is member of several steering committees, editorial boards and scientific advisory committees.

Julia Sterling works for Commerzbank as Vice President in Business Development / Big Data & Advanced Analytics. Her focus is on cloud and machine learning governance principles. This includes developing and evaluating the strategic direction for the use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This also includes issues around AI ethics and legal requirements.

Julia studied in Frankfurt and Loughborough (UK) and holds an interdisciplinary Bachelor in ""Management, Philosophy & Economics"" and Master in ""Finance"" (Capital Markets).

She is a founding member of the "European Cloud User Coalition" (ECUC), member of the IIF Digital Working Group, EBF AI Expert Group and BDB Working Group Open Finance, Data and Artificial Intelligence.

• 2013–2019 Research Assistant, RWTH Aachen University - Analysis of data measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory, Software Development in the VISPA project
• 2019–2021 Data Scientist, LANXESS - Machine learning platform for the development of chemical products
• Since 2021 Senior Data Scientist, LANXESS - Leading the in-house development of the LANXESS data integration and analytics platform

Agostino is a Senior Data Scientist at Shopify who has a background in ecommerce and fintech. While now working for a pioneer in ecommerce, he previously worked for N26 while the company went from a small start-up to one of Germany's biggest banks. During his time in both companies he focused on data insights, machine learning modelling and deployments according do best MLOps practices.

Torsten has been employed as AI Development Manager in the AI Factory division of Deutsche Bahn AG since 2022. There, he is responsible for AI projects in rail operations, which are implemented in collaboration with the business units. Previously, he held various positions at T-Systems International GmbH, including Senior Product Manager and Product Owner BigData & AI for AI services on a public cloud.

Philipp Drieger works as a Global Principal Machine Learning Architect at Splunk. He accompanies Splunk customers and partners across various industries in their digital journeys, helping to achieve advanced AI use cases in cybersecurity, IT operations, IoT and business analytics. Before joining Splunk, Philipp worked as freelance software developer and consultant focussing on high performance 3D graphics and visual computing technologies. In research, he has published papers on text mining and semantic network analysis.

Benjamin Feldmann is a data engineer at bakdata, working on highly scalable big data platforms and data streaming applications. Coming from an Apache Kafka Streams background, he explores solutions to connect data platforms and machine learning with streaming technologies. In recent years he specialized in MLOps topics and wants to enable Data Scientists to develop and productize their models as best as possible.

Linda Flath has been with herCAREER, the comprehensive platform for female careers, from the very beginning. She has also previously worked in trade fair management, including as a project manager at spring Messe Management GmbH ("Arbeitswelt der Zukunft"), where she was responsible for planning and operational implementation of HR trade fairs and congresses, further development of the trade fair concept, support for partners and much more. At herCAREER, she helped to develop and implement the new trade fair concept together with GF Natascha Hoffner. After a professional "excursion" of almost two years in another industry, she rejoined herCAREER. First as Director and since November 2021 as COO.
She likes to keep in touch with her friends in the USA and here in Germany. In general, she is a very sociable person with a great passion for her job.

Tabea Glindemann is an Intelligence Architect at Birds on Mars, where she enables organizations to realize the potential of data and AI. Previously, she worked as a data scientist in the ad tech industry before turning her back on Big Data algorithms to focus on sustainable and impactful ways to use technology. Alongside her professional career, she is interested and dedicated to data privacy, empowerment, and digital ethics, as well as an active member of the Berlin-based feminist hackspace Heart of Code.

• +13 years of experience in different functions (executive management, program management, key account management) within high tech, software, automation and management consulting: from start-up to global player.
• Current role as Strategic Innovation Manager for AIoT projects of our global key accounts. These projects include large transformation projects, manufacturing excellence, IoT/ IIoT, Big Data as well as OT-IT Convergence. In his current role, Tobias brings together Bosch's inside-out expertise with customers' outside-in needs and desires, analyzing, designing and implementing relevant innovations and large-scale programs
• Completed projects in over 40 countries -

Business Developer Media Engineering - Cognitive Business Optimization & Smart Coding and Learning
(previously) Resarch Assistant AI Strategy Development

Studied Business Information Systems and Economics

Marion is Head of Decision Science in IT-Pharma, where her and her team‘s responsibility is to implement Data Science/Artificial Intelligence solutions for and alongside with the entities of the Pharma business. Marion holds her PhD in Economics where she started her career quantifying the macroeconomic footprint of the health care industry and its effects on financial equalisation schemes to support political decision making, working as a Researcher for the WifOR Institute. Before joining Bayer in June 2020, she worked as a Data Scientist at the Deloitte Analytics Institute, where she broadened both her methodological as well as her industry expertise in the Life Science & Health Care area. Until end of 2022, Marion was Head of ""Decision Science for Medical Affairs, Pharmacovigilance and Regulatory Affairs"" at Bayer before she took over managing the whole Decision Science Pharma organisation. Today, the organisation of Decision Science in Pharma hosts a diverse skill set of Data Scientists and Machine Learning Engineers with technical focus areas such as Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Sound & Signal Processing, Optimization, Simulation, Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning Engineering.

• Since 2022 Senior Data Scientist @ Commerzbank AG - Big Data and Advanced Analytics
• 2020 - 2022 Financial Data Scientist | Group Lead @ Deutsche Bundesbank - Central Office Statistics
• 2019 - 2020 Postdoctoral Researcher in Theoretical Physics @ Technische Universität Darmstadt
• 2016 - 2019 Doctoral Researcher in Theoretical Physics @ Technische Universität Darmstadt
• 2015 - 2015 Research Associate in Computational Neuroscience @ MPI for Brain Research

• Studied electrical engineering at TU Berlin (Bachelor and Master with focus on AI and data processing).
• Started at DB in the House of AI as a student: Execution of a POC to predict wheel wear on ICEs
• Currently: AI Specialist in the AI Factory in the AI in Dispatching project

Maren Pielka has been a Data Scientist at Fraunhofer IAIS since 2020, and took over as head of the "Cognitive Text Analytics" team in 2022. She focuses on text analysis methods to simplify time-consuming processes (e.g., searching through long documents). She has a master's degree in computer science, and plans to follow it up with a PhD.

• Graduated at Maastricht University with a Master of Science with a specialization in Business Intelligence & Data Management
• Has been with Microsoft for 5 years and works with customers in the Chemical industry with focus on realizing their data use cases to drive value for these companies

Technology Lead and Manager for Strategic Products in PwC's Digital Core Products division. Developing Scalable and Global Solutions for Financial Services that use Natural Language Processing. Organizer of the PwC Tech Talk Meetup Series in Berlin. Academic background in Business Informatics and specialist in DevOps Engineering.

• Studies in civil engineering
• Doctorate in Civil Informatics
• since 2016 at wattx as Data Scientist

Rosmarie Steininger is the founder and CEO of CHEMISTREE. She thinks it's great to effect relationships, and to do so with the help of algorithms. After studying business administration with a focus on business informatics, she spent eight years at the BMW Group developing algorithms for logistics systems and managing international projects. During her six years on the management board of the Eberhard von Kuenheim Foundation of BMW AG, she designed and managed charitable projects whose success was based on particularly good relationships among the participants. She brought both facets together in 2017 when she founded CHEMISTREE. CHEMISTREE develops matching and community platforms for its clients, e.g. for mentoring, peer coaching or for events. Excellence and trust in software development are important to Rosmarie Steininger - both in her company and in her role as an expert in the German government's AI strategy and the AI standardization roadmap.

Tim is a physical scientist turned data scientist turned AI manager. At Schwarz Group, Europe’s largest retailer, he leads the AI Engineering department, whose mission is to deliver value through AI data products. To this end, Data Science and Product Engineering teams work together to build a plethora of production-grade AI solutions for retail, food production, and waste management. Schwarz Group is Europe’s leading retailer (Lidl, Kaufland) and also active in food production (Schwarz Produktion) as well as in waste management and recycling (PreZero). In total, Schwarz group has more than 500,000 employees and an annual revenue of more than 130 bn EUR.