Dr. Solveig Franziska Bucher

I’m working on the ecophysiological and phenological adaptations of plants to changing climate and the seasonal variation of the trade-off in between the investment in growth vs. resistance. More specifically I try to find out why and how some species are able to track global change and benefit from it whereas others aren’t.

Prof. Dr. Markus Bernhardt-Römermann

The species composition and biodiversity of ecosystems primarily depends on nutrient availability and land use, but is also influenced by the climatic conditions. However, our knowledge how these factors interact is limited. Consequently, my research deals with the importance and interactions between abiotic (e.g. temperature, precipitation, nutrient availability through inputs from the air) and biotic factors (e.g. taxonomic and functional diversity) for changes in vegetation and ecosystems along large spatio-temporal scales.

Prof. Dr. Christine Römermann

Prof. Dr. Holger Schielzeth

Prof. Holger Schielzeth is the leader of the Population Ecology Group of the Institute of Ecology at the FSU. He is an evolutionary ecologist particularly interested in microevolution, population genomics and biostatistics.

Prof. Dr. Kirsten Küsel

Based on my interdisciplinary background, my research group is focused on the microbial processes and biogeochemistry of a variety of ecosystems from freshwater lakes and sediments, peatlands, and both pristine and heavy metal contaminated streams and aquifers. We use both molecular and cultivation-based techniques to unravel the structure/function relationships of the inherent microbial communities.

Prof. Dr. Nicole van Dam

My aim is to unravel the chemical and molecular mechanisms of induced plant responses, especially interactions between aboveground and belowground organisms via induced plant responses. Hereby I take an ecogenomics approach, combining metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses as well as manipulative experiments to study these interactions in the greenhouse as well as in the field.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Halle

I am interested in the demography and population dynamics of small rodents, which is a classic field of ecological modeling. The second main interest are mechanisms for the establishment of behavioral traits in animals during evolution, which also includes an strong modeling approach (especially game theory models).

Prof. Dr. Thilo Figge

The research group Applied Systems Biology is concerned with the mathematical modelling and computer simulation of infection processes caused by human-pathogenic fungi. The spatio-temporal data basis for these models is acquired by automatizing the data analysis of microscopy images on infection processes for high-throughput scanning. Our aim is to unravel secrets of the dynamical, functional and morphological aspects of the host-pathogen interaction using approaches of image-based systems biology.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Brose

I study how environmental factors change the structure and diversity of species communities with knock-on effects on the dynamic stability and ecosystem functioning. I describe the structure of communities by complex food-web topologies (who eats whom) and the average body sizes of all species. I am interested in the responses of these structures to global and local environmental gradients in temperature, stoichiometry and habitat fragmentation. Mathematically, I analyze how these structural responses drive the dynamic stability of populations, communities and ecosystem functions.

Dr. Jason Goetz

As a researcher in Geographic Information Science, I’m constantly learning and developing new approaches and analytic tools to meet the needs of challenging spatial problems. My areas of expertise include 3D mapping and feature monitoring using drones, and statistical and machine learning for spatial-temporal predictions of Earth surface process in mountain areas.

Dr. Kevin Maik Jablonka

The discovery of materials and molecules is a tedious, expensive, and serendipitous process. An important reason for that is that it requires a lot of experience and tacit knowledge to become good at designing new compounds. In my group, we leverage data-driven techniques to address this information bottleneck to accelerate the development of materials that work in the real world.

Dr. Sophie Biskop

As a geographer, my research interests focus on the quantification and assessment of climate change impacts on the hydrology in high mountain regions and the implications on water supply to the downstream lowland areas by integrating hydrological modelling and remote sensing techniques. My research contributes to a better understanding of spatiotemporal hydrological patterns and water balance changes at a catchment-through-regional scale in order to support sustainable management and planning of water demands in a changing environment.

Dr. Sören Hese

Dr. Thomas Bocklitz

Thomas Bocklitz is junior research group leader in the FSU and working group leader in the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technologies (IPHT) dealing with ‘Statistical Modelling and Image Analysis’. His research focuses on the extraction of bio-medical information from photonic, spectrometric and in general physical measurements of bio-medical samples.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Brenning

As a quantitative geographer and geographic information scientist, my research focuses on spatial statistical and computational tools and their application to a variety of phenomena, including Earth surface processes and ‘big’ environmental remote sensing data. My research contributes to the critical problem of developing and assessing the uncertainties of ‘spatially-aware’ empirical models of environmental variables as a basis for decision-making in spatial planning and land management.

Prof. Dr. Christiane Schmullius

Prof. Dr. Christoph Steinbeck

Christoph Steinbeck is interested in computational metabolomics and the computer-assisted structure elucidation of metabolites. He leads the PhenoMeNal H2020 project to build an e-infrastructure for computing with big clinical metabolomics data.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Popp

Prof. Dr. Kai Totsche

Research Areas: Fluidfluss und reaktiver Stofftransport in Böden, Sedimenten und Grundwasserleitern, Trägervermittelter Stofftransport, Kolloid-Gesteins/Boden-Fluid-Wechselwirkungen, Bildung, Struktur und Eigenschaften mineralorganischer Partikel, Interaktionen an Grenzflächen in nat. porösen Medien, Vorsorgender und nachsorgender Boden- und Grundwasserschutz: Innovative Sanierungsverfahren & “Intelligente” Flächenfilter, Zusammenhang Struktur, Eigenschaften und Funktion natürlicher poröser Medien.

Prof. Dr. Nina Kukowski

My main research interest is to quantitatively understand geoprocesses and their interrelations with a focus on those processes in which fluids play an important role. Besides geophysical and rock physics data, the marine and onshore acquisition of which, is among the practical work I am undertaking. I use physical experiments and numerical simulation to study e.g. deformation at continental margins or fluid flow in sedimentary basins. Gas hydrate systems and slope stability at convergent margins like Hikurangi or Peru, sediment mobilization processes, and to image structures and flow systems in forearc but also intra-continental basins like in mid-Europe are topics of recent and ongoing projects.

Prof. Dr. Stefanie Gräfe

Prof. Gräfe’s research interests cover theoretical description of laser-matter interaction. The focus lies on the interaction with atoms and molecules with weak or strong laser fields, using quantum chemical, quantum dynamical and classical dynamical methods.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Wegler

The main research topic of the group ‘applied geophysics’ is seismology. We simulate seismic wave and seismic energy propagation in complex media, where effects like multiple scattering and absorption are our main interests. Real time seismic data analysis in the context of automatic earthquake information systems is another research topic.

Dr. Christian Knüpfer

Dr. Christian Hoener zu Siederdissen

We are interested in the design of bespoke algorithms for complex problems in bioinformatics, biology, and biotechnology. We further the understanding of the compositionality of algorithms, algebraic structures, and programming languages. In addition, we are interested in statistical models, neural networks, and learning algorithms in general.

Dr. Dr. Susanne M. Hoffmann

Dr. Dr. Susanne M. Hoffmann’s astronomical research is based on her educational background at the two faculties of science/ technology and humanities. She aims to develop a new research field in digital astronomy in the intersection of science and humanities. This way, she contributes to the development of planetarium software for desktop computers as well as the Jena dome planetarium.

Websites: http://uhura-uraniae.com, http://exopla.net

Dr. Sheeba Samuel

Sheeba Samuel is a computer scientist at the Heinz-Nixdorf Chair for Distributed Information Systems. Her research focus on e-Science, Semantic Web and Machine Learning, specifically on improving reproducible research using provenance, linked data, etc.

Prof. Dr. Kai Lawonn

Prof. Dr. Kai Lawonn leads the Visualization and Explorative Data Analysis Group at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena: The visualization group aims to visualize data for improved exploration and analysis. We work in close collaboration with experts in various fields to develop visualization techniques that support their research. For this, we employ advanced 3D rendering on modern graphics hardware to gain insight into the data.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Breuer

Alexander’s work tackles computationally demanding challenges in research and industry.
His work covers the involved disciplines from the bare metal of computer architectures to fully automated production workflows by integrating modeling and simulation, high-performance computing, software engineering, data analytics, and verification and validation. This overarching approach is key for building visionary, transferable, robust and efficient software pipelines.
In 2014 Alexander was honored with an ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship for his Ph.D. project “High Performance Earthquake Simulations”.
In addition, he and his collaborators have been awarded with the PRACE ISC Award and nominated as ACM Gordon Bell finalists.
Alexander holds a doctoral degree from the Technical University of Munich and currently leads the Scalable Data- and Compute-intensive Analyses lab at FSU Jena.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Löhne

I work on vector and set optimization (in particular, on multiple objective optimization). My research interests range from theoretical aspects to applications and algorithms.

Prof. Dr. Birgitta König-Ries

The central theme of our work is the transparent, integrated usage of resources in open, heterogeneous, dynamic environments. The ultimate goal of this research is to build systems that optimally support users in achieving their goals without the need of human intervention.

Prof. Dr. Clemens Beckstein

The work of our group is revolving around the general question how computers can be used to support modeling and simulation in the scientific process. From a computer science and philosophy of science point of view not only results from experiments and imulations but also the scientific models themselves that connect these results as well as the computational tools that are used to analyse and communicate these models in the scientific cycle are data. In order for computers to help make sense of these data the corresponding algorithms must handle it in a way that is compatible with the knowledge that is represented by those models. With a focus on dynamic models in systems biology we therefore ask: what are adequate computer “understandable” formal representations 1) of this knowledge, 2) of the role of the models in simulations and 3) of the results produced by these simulations, i.e. of the structure, function and behaviour of these models?

Dr. Frank Löffler

Frank Löffler’s interests span traditional departmental boundaries and focus on computer science and physics, including semantic technologies, artificial intelligence, and the modeling and detection of gravitational wave sources.
Aside from research, he is also interested in educational and career questions in academia, and is co-founder of the German research software engineer association (de-RSE).
Since 2021, he is the head of the Competence Center Digital Research (zedif) established at MSCJ.

Prof. Dr. Joachim Denzler

Joachim Denzler is Professor for Computer Science and Head of the Computer Vision Group at the FSU Jena. His research interests comprise the automatic analysis, fusion, and understanding of sensor data, especially development of methods for visual recognition tasks and dynamic scene analysis.

Prof. Dr. Joachim Giesen

I am interested in the theory and practice of machine learning, particularly in algorithms and algorithm engineering for training and inference.

Prof. Dr. Lutz Maicher

Lutz Maicher ist Juniorprofessor für Technologietransfer an der Informatik-Fakultät der FSU. Schwerpunkt seiner Arbeit ist die Entwicklung und Optimierung von Informationssystemen für Technologietransfer und -märkte. Die Integration, Analyse und Visualisierung heterogener, dynamischer Datenquellen relevanter Marktinformationen steht dabei im Zentrum seiner Forschung.

Prof. Dr. Manja Marz

Junior-Endowed Professorship of Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung for Bioinformatics/High Throughput Analysis. High Throughput Sequencing Analysis Comparative Genomics Identification and Annotation of Non-coding RNAs Bioinformatic Analysis and System Biology of Viruses.

Prof. Dr. Martin Bücker

The research focus is on enabling techniques for computational and data science: parallel algorithms, high-performance computing, mathematical software, inverse problems, sensitivity analysis, combinatorial scientific computing.

Prof. Dr. Peter Dittrich

The aim of our group is to apply and to develop new computational methods in order to understand complex dynamical phenomena found in living systems and to use this knowledge for the design of novel organic systems.

Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böcker

We are developing computational methods for the analysis of experimental data in the Life Sciences. Research areas includes metabolomics and natural products research, comparative genomics, and phylogenetics, but also the analysis of synthetic polymers by mass spectrometry.

Prof. Dr. Tobias Oertel-Jäger

Our group provides expertise on Dynamical Systems, Bifurcation Theory and Fractal Geometry. We are interested in the application of Dynamical Systems theory to the natural sciences (physics, biology, climate, …).

Dr. Nina Hahn

My passion is to understand the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. I aim to identify the pathophysiological key players in order to develop corresponding therapeutic approaches. Focusing on cellular and molecular neuroimmunology, my recent projects investigate sepsis-associated encephalopathy and autoimmune encephalitis.

Dr. Torsten Bölke

Torsten Bölke, PhD, leads the biomedical informatics related development at the Institute for Anatomy II. His interests are focussed on the development of partially AI-based image processing tools in order to speed up and improve the analysis of biomedical datasets. Another main part of his work is the development and application of data science methods for management, representation and retrieval of knowledge within medical e-learning.

Prof. Dr. André Scherag

André Scherag is director of the Institute of Medical Statistics, Computer and Data Sciences at the Jena University Hospital. His research interests comprise clinical, genetic and translational epidemiology as well as clinical trial statistics, biometry, bioinformatics and biostatistics. He is particularly interested in methodological challenges of translating (big) data-driven ideas and results – including the promises of precision/personalized medicine – into clinical practice.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Gebert

Prof. Dr. Christoph Redies

Prof. Dr. Cord Spreckelsen

The medical informatics group addresses data provision, integration and interpretation issues in healthcare. A special focus lies in exploring algorithmic methods to improve clinical data quality (e.g. by anomaly detection). We investigate applications of machine learning techniques in order to improve clinical supply‐chains, as well as process and resource management. Additionally, we use semantic web technologies, including biomedical ontologies, in the area of interoperability and knowledge management. As a major challenge we try to specify adequate combinations of data driven and logic‐based approaches to medical decision support. The group also engages in developing teaching formats fostering digital competencies in medicine.

Prof. Dr. Ferdinand von Eggeling

Matrix-assisted laser desorption / ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) allows to obtain ‘omic’ profiles and identification of markers directly from thin frozen or formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue sections. MALDI imaging is a label-free technique and can visualize the distribution of hundreds of molecular compounds (proteins, peptides, lipids) in a single, pixel wise measurement. MALDI imaging is used for the pathological analysis of various tissue types, especially in oncology. A MALDI imaging data set includes several thousand individual mass spectra, with several thousand intensity values each. The superimposition of individual MALDI images with microscopic images or spectroscopic images can provide valuable and synergistic information.

Prof. Dr. Herbert Witte

Research fields are computational neuroscience (ECoG, EEG, MEG, fMRI, MRI), intensive care monitoring (EEG, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure), time variant signal and connectivity analysis (linear and nonlinear, parametric and non-parametric approaches), modeling (e.g. coupled non-linear oscillator networks, Dynamic Causal Modeling), pattern recognition by using artificial neural networks.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Reichenbach

The Medical Physics Group is part of the Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology (IDIR) at the Jena University Hospital. It conducts interdisciplinary research in the field of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and applies its extensive methodological expertise in data acquisition and post-processing to address scientific biomedical and clinical challenges.

Prof. Dr. Michael Habeck

I am broadly interested in Bayesian inference and its application to experimental data from Biophysics and Structural Biology. I view probability theory as the mathematical framework for making consistent inferences and predictions from incomplete and uncertain information. Therefore, Bayesian methods are powerful tools to support scientific inference and solve engineering problems. My previous and current research focuses on two main topics: Integrative modeling of biomolecular systems and algorithms for Bayesian inference.

Prof. Dr. Rainer König

High throughput methods of functional genomics produce massive data on a genome wide scale for a large variety of different organisms, organs and diseases. This information needs to be funneled and organized into a medical meaningful context. We investigate the regulation of the inflammatory response of immune cells after infection or in sepsis, aberrant regulatory mechanisms of tumor cells, and are interested in telomere maintenance mechanisms. We employ Mixed Integer Linear Programming and machine learning methods to solve a variety of problems in bioinformatics, e.g. for identifying cell context specific regulators of gene expression, detecting specific regulation patterns in cellular networks, or combining machine learning problems to improve biomarker consistency.

Prof. Dr. Ralf Mrowka

We investigate questions of the physiology of the cardiovascular system with theoretical approaches as well as by means of tools of molecular biology. One research focus is the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system (RAAS) which plays a key role in the blood pressure regulation and water and electrolyte balance in humans. We investigate mechanisms of gene regulation on the transcriptional as well as posttranscriptional level such as action of proteins and miRNAs on gene regulation. Our work contributes to the elucidation of pathophysiological mechanisms that lead to cardiovascular mortality which is the main cause of death in Europe.

Prof. Dr. Uta Dahmen

Experimental Surgery specializes on projects related to liver perfusion, regeneration, and ischemia and <transplantation as well as device development, systems biology&medicine and research in medical education.The methodological profile consists of disease models, microsurgical procedures, hemodynamic monitoring, gene and protein expression, histology and image analysis,

Dr. Georg Bergner

The topic of my research activities is the investigations of strongly coupled gauge theories with the numerical methods of quantum field theory on a space-time lattice. My group is focused on new applications of these methods related to the extension of the standard model of particle physics and gauge/gravity duality. We are addressing fundamental questions about the confinement mechanism and the nature of quantum gravity. Our investigations require the development of extensive numerical tools for the simulations on large scale HPC clusters. As part of larger collaborations, I am also involved in numerical investigations of quantum chromodynamics.

Prof. Dr. Sebastiano Bernuzzi

The research activity of my group is about modeling the strong-field dynamics of compact binaries in general relativity and interfacing theoretical predictions with the data-analysis of gravitational-wave and multi-messenger astronomy signals. Our work include the development of numerical methods and dedicated codes for numerical general relativity, and HPC simulations. I am member of the LIGO-Virgo collaboration and lead an international team of astrophysicists and theoretical physicists working on source modeling and data analysis.

Dr. André Sternbeck

Andre’s research activities focus on particle and computational physics, in particular on lattice formulations of quantum field theories. He performs Monte-Carlo calculations on small and large computing systems to deepen our understanding of the strong interaction, one of the four fundamental forces in nature.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Wipf

Research Areas: Simulations of Lattice Field Theories with and without dynamical fermions, Nonperturbative Aspects of (supersymmetric) Field Theories, Monopoles, Sphalerons and Instantons in Gauge Theories, Quantum Physics in Curved Spaces: Black Hole Physics, Conformal Field Theories: Kac-Moody and W-Algebras, WZW-Models, Toda Theories, Quantization of 2-dimensional Gauge Theories and External Field Problems: Effective Action, Effective Potentials, Casimir Effect, Anomalies.

Prof. Dr. Bernd Brügmann

My main scientific interest is currently the two body problem for two black holes. The classical two body problem in physics is formulated for two point-like masses. In Newtonian physics this problem has the well-known solution in terms of Kepler orbits, but do we really understand how two masses move in their mutual gravitational field? As surprising as it may seem at first, the answer to this question is not really known, even if we restrict ourselves to classical, non-quantum physics and to no more than two bodies.

Prof. Dr. Silvana Botti

The Condensed Matter Theory Group works on the theoretical development and numerical implementation of many-body approaches for the description of electronic excitations. The tools used are based on density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory. Examples of applications are the simulation of spectroscopic properties of “real” materials of technological interest, that can range from simple bulk crystals to non-stoichiometric, doped, alloyed compounds, or to nanostructured materials and interfaces. At the same time, a “materials by design” approach based on global structural prediction and high-throughput calculations is followed to propose novel materials, that are then further characterized with the same techniques used for known materials. Present research activities are particularly focused on materials for energy production, storage and saving.

Prof. Dr. Stephan Fritzsche

Electron excitation and ionization dynamics in intense and twisted fields. Design & development of computer-algebraic approaches for quantum many-particle systems.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Pertsch

Thomas Pertsch is Professor for Applied Physics at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where he heads the Nano and Quantum Optics group at the Institute of Applied Physics. His research focuses on the interaction of light with microstructured and nanostructured matter, including optical metamaterials and photonic crystals as well as ultrafast nonlinear dynamics and quantum optics.

Prof. Dr. Ulf Peschel

Prof. Dr. Stefan Schweinberger

Stefan R. Schweinberger is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Jena. He is interested in the cognitive, social, and brain processes that mediate human perception and communication. Research methods include digital methods to manipulate (e.g., via averaging, morphing, or caricaturing) social cues in realistic faces and voices for use in experimental studies, and neuroimaging (EEG, ERP, fMRI) to investigate the human brain system for social communication. Stefan Schweinberger currently directs the DFG Research Unit Person Perception.

J.-Prof. Dr. Sander Münster

Sander Münster holds a junior professorship for Digital Humanities at FSU Jena which is focussed on image and object data. He is secretrary of the Time Machine Organisation and coordinates th TU Dresden part of Time Machine CSA.
His research interests are: – Digital 3D Reconstructions, esp. work processes, standards, presentation and discourse integration – 3D digitization of cultural heritage, especially automation and user-generated content – Information systems for 3D models – Science Analysis and Informetrics – Methodological changes through image- and object-related digital humanities in art and architectural history research – Visual research processes and visual perception.

PD Dr. Barbara Aehnlich

Barbara Aehnlich is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of the History of the German language at the University of Jena. Her research interests are the corpus-based analysis of historical language data and multi-level annotation of non-standard language. Her current project is on Early New High German law texts.

Prof. Dr. Robert Gramsch-Stehfest

Robert Gramsch-Stehfest is an extraordinary Professor of Medieval History at the Historical Institute. His research interests involve quantitative methods in medieval studies, especially in the fields of historical statistics and Social Network Analysis. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Historical Network Research (https://jhnr.uni.lu/index.php/jhnr) and of an interdisciplinary working group at University of Jena MEPHisto (Models, Explanations and Processes in the historical sciences, https://www.mephisto.uni-jena.de/), which studies the requirements for a collaborative, open research environment for the humanities in a current project.

Prof. Dr. Udo Hahn

Prof. Dr. Volker Gast

Volker Gast is a professor of English linguistics at the University of Jena. His current research interests are mainly in the areas of linguistic typology, language documentation and semantics, with a focus on corpus-based methods. He is working on the multi-level annotation of texts from typologically diverse languages.

Dr. Olaf Schneider

Since December 2019, Dr. Olaf Schneider is director of the University Computing Center of Friedrich Schiller University Jena. At the same time, this also makes him one of two board members of the IT Center of Thuringian Higher Educational Institutions. In addition, he is the spokesperson of the working group “Supercomputing” of the association of Centres for Communication and Information Processing (ZKI e.V.). Olaf Schneider holds a doctoral degree in mathematics with a focus on numerics and has been active in many areas of scientific computing, both as a researcher and in the management and operation of research infrastructures.

Dr. Andreas Christoph

Andreas Christoph, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of History of Medicine, Natural Sciences and Technology, Ernst-Haeckel-Haus. His research interests focus on the history of maps, atlases and globes. In collaboration with the Leopoldina Centre for Science Studies and the Thuringian University and State Library (ThULB) Jena, he works on the implementation of a GeoBrowser-Tool for old maps (Kartenarchiv Plus). He uses 2D- and 3D-Scan technologies, and OCR and HTR-tools as well. Since summer 2015 he is a founding member of the DHnet | Jena.

Prof. Dr. Sönke Zaehle

My main research interest lies in the interaction of land biota with the climate system. My research integrates new ecophysiological knowledge, ecological observations (including plant trait information, in situ measurements, atmospheric concentration measurements, and remote sensing data) with modelling at different scales and levels of complexities. I develop, test and apply large-scale process-based terrestrial biosphere models to understand the interactions between land-surface and atmospheric processes.

Prof. Dr. Markus Reichstein

Markus Reichstein is interested in various aspects of Earth System Science, in particular in climatic and non-climatic effects on biosphere dynamics and major global biogeochemical cycles (carbon, water, nitrogen, phosphorus). He is bringing together data-driven, simulation-driven and theoretical approaches to improve our understanding of the Earth System.

Dr. Denise Kühnert

Denise Kühnert is an independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. She leads the Transmission, Infection, Diversification & Evolution Group (tide). The tide group develops and applies phylogenetic approaches to address scientific questions at the interface of mathematical epidemiology, evolution, ecology and infectious diseases.

Dr. Friederike Klan

We do foundational research on Citizen-Science-related topics. Besides the question of how citizens and scientists can be engaged in joint projects and work together, data science aspects of Citizen Science are at the core of our research. Topics include semantic attribution of data, data provenance and quality, data integration and analysis, e.g. of social media data and volunteered geographic information.

Dr. Jakob Runge

Jakob Runge, leader of the Climate Informatics group at DLR, is a complex systems scientist with a focus on causal discovery techniques from high-dimensional, nonlinear time series. Jakob utilizes modern methods from machine learning and collaborates with researchers from many applied fields to help in better understanding real world complex systems, in particular the climate system.

Prof. Dr. Christian Thiel

Since June 2018 Christian Thiel is member of the Citizen Science Department at the DLR Institute of Data Science in Jena. In 2020 he was awarded the dignity of an associate (apl.) professor in the thematic field of citizen science at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. His overarching research interest is the involvement of citizen scientists in an integrative approach of Earth observation to support the understanding of biophysical processes. His specific interests lie in the use of low cost equipment such as smartphones and drones for mass data generation, in psychological aspects of the motivation of citizen scientists and in the integration of citizen science in learning practices.

Dr. Yanira Guanche García

Yanira Guanche García is interested in exploring new methods for statistical analysis of environmental variables. Currently her research is focused on the detection of extreme events and its application to earth observations and marine climate.

Dr. Melike Dönertaş

Dr Melike Dönertaş is a computational biologist who leads the junior research group “AI in Microbiome and Aging Research” at the Leibniz Institute on Aging (FLI). Her research focuses on the systems biology of ageing, with a particular emphasis on the interactions between the microbiome and the host. Her team develops and applies data integration strategies, databases, and models that specialise in age series and longitudinal data. Through their work, they aim to uncover the temporal dynamics of microbe-host interactions, identify the microbiome as a robust biomarker of ageing, and discover potential therapeutic targets for treating age-related diseases.

Prof. Dr. Steve Hoffmann

Steve Hoffmann is a computational biologist interested in genome regulation data analysis. Specifically, Steve is curious to learn more about the impact of DNA methylation and other epigenetic marks on transcription in aging and age-related diseases. To this end, his group generates and analyses large sequencing data sets. Furthermore, the group develops computational methods to facilitate the research into genome data.