Summary

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PhD candidate in Computer Science at LMU Munich with a research focus on collective intelligence, evolutionary optimization, quantum machine learning, and reinforcement learning. Experienced in leading interdisciplinary AI and quantum computing projects, with publications at AAMAS, ICML, IJCAI, and NeurIPS. Passionate about bridging theory and application through exploratory, robust, and aligned learning systems.

Education

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Ph.D. Computer Science, LMU Munich (2020 – present)

Thesis: “Surrogate Modeling for Collective Intelligence” (Thesis submitted and under review; defense expected early 2026)

Advisor: Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, Examiners: Kagan Tumer, Eyke Hüllermeier

M.Sc. Computer Science, LMU Munich (2018 – 2020)

Thesis: “Adversarial Self-Imitation Learning” (grade: 1.0, final grade: 1.29)

Courses including Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems, iOS Development, and Quantum Applications

B.Sc. Media Informatics, LMU Munich (2014 – 2018)

Thesis: “Surrogate assisted genetic algorithms for interactive recommendation systems” (grade 1.0, final grade: 1.37)

Courses including Business Planning, Industrial Design, and Web Development

Subsidiary field in Human-Computer Interaction (courses including Psychology, Human Factors, and Interaction Design)

Abitur, Otfried-Preußler-Gymnasium Pullach (2006 – 2014)

Final Grade: 1.9

Professional Experience

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Research Associate, LMU Munich (2020 – present)

Project management for various research projects, e.g., MQV and AI-Fusion (cf. project experience)

Lecturing and student supervision in practical courses and theses (cf. teaching experience)

Association and event organization for a network of companies in and around Munich

Research Assistant, LMU Munich (2019 – 2020)

Support for various research projects, including developing a recommender engine for intelligent job-to-user-profile matching

Web Developer, Polyteia, Munich (2017 – 2018)

Developing a frontend web application for visualizing urban budget data

Conceptual planning and support for the user experience design in a Scrum project environment

Working Student, Ray Sono, Munich (2015 – 2017)

Supporting the frontend development of various customer projects

Content management activities and app testing

Research Interests

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Collective Intelligence (ExplorationRobustnessAlignment) (2021 – present)

Quantum Machine Learning (2020 – present)

Reinforcement Learning and Agentic Systems (2017 – present)

Evolutionary Optimization and Processes (2017 – present)

Honors and Awards

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Best Poster Award for our paper “Finding Strong Lottery Ticket Networks with Genetic Algorithms” and invitation to submit an extended version to Studies in Computational Intelligence. (IJCCI 2024)

High-quality Paper Selection Invitation to submit an extended version of our paper “REACT: Revealing Evolutionary Action Consequence Trajectories for Interpretable Reinforcement Learning” to Springer Nature Computer Science. (IJCCI 2024)

Paper Selection Invitation to submit an extended version of our paper “Improving Parameter Training for VQEs by Sequential Hamiltonian Assembly” to Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. (ICAART 2024)

Paper Selection Invitation to submit an extended version of our paper “Multi-Agent Quantum Reinforcement Learning Using Evolutionary Optimization” to Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. (ICAART 2024)

Paper Selection Invitation to submit an extended version of our paper “DIRECT: Learning from Sparse and Shifting Rewards using Discriminative Reward Co-Training” to Neural Computing and Applications. (ALA@AAMAS2023)

Premier Paper Invitation to submit an extended version of our paper “Emergent Cooperation from Mutual Acknowledgment Exchange” to the Journal of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. (AAMAS 2022)

Highlight Paper Recognition of our AAMAS 2022 paper “Emergent Cooperation from Mutual Acknowledgment Exchange” at the IJCAI 2022 Workshop on Ad Hoc Teamwork. (WAHT@IJCAI 2022)

Selected Publications

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Publication Statistics (as of October 2025): 245 Citations, h-Index: 9, i10-Index: 7

Project Experience

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Munich Quantum Valley (MQV) (2021 – present)

Promote quantum science and technologies to develop and operate competitive quantum computers

Funding: Bavarian state government with funds from the Hightech Agenda Bayern

Partner: BAdW, DLR, FhG, FAU, MPG, TUM. Role: Principal Investigator

AI-Fusion: Evaluation of Emergence in Distributed AI Systems (2022 – 2024)

Transferring safe intelligence from research to application

Funding: Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development, and Energy

Partner: Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems

QAR-Lab: Quantum Applications and Research Laboratory (2021 – 2022)

Building a Bavarian ecosystem for quantum computing and user expertise

Funding: Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development, and Energy

PlanQK: Platform and Ecosystem for Quantum-Assisted Artificial Intelligence (2020 – 2022)

Create a technical basis for knowledge and technology exchange on quantum-assisted AI

Funding: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy

InnoMI – Innovation Center Mobile Internet (2020 – 2022)

Research on innovative mobile and distributed systems

Funding: Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development, and Energy

Teaching Experience

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Working Group Artificial Intelligence (2023 – present)

Weekly exchange on recent research in computational intelligence, RL, and QML

Voluntary additional module, supervision of 8–12 students per semester supporting their thesis projects

Practical Course Autonomous Systems (2022 – present)

Lectures on reinforcement learning and autonomous decision-making

Projects on implementing autonomous continuous decision-making algorithms (e.g., kart driving, robotic grasping)

Supervision of 16–24 students per semester in groups of 3–5

Practical Course Affective Computing (2021 – present)

Lectures on theoretical and practical backgrounds in affective computing and empathic artificial intelligence

Projects on demonstrating the integration of affective or emotional data

Supervision of 16–24 students per semester in groups of 3–5

Thesis Supervision (11 master theses, 15 bachelor theses) (2021 – present)

Topics include evolutionary optimization, emergent cooperation, exploration, generalization, multi-agent systems, prompt optimization, reinforcement learning, adversarial robustness, variational quantum circuits

Volunteer Work

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Head of Office, Digitale Stadt München e.V. (2021 – present)

Festival Booking and Artist Relations, Kulturspektakel Gauting e.V. (2017 – present)

Side Projects and Activities

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Bartender for events and concerts (since 2019 in managerial position) (2015 – 2024)

Professional Services

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Program Committee: AAAI, ACII, ALA, IJCAI, GECCO, QAIO

Reviewer: ICLR, ICML, Nature Communications Physics, Neural Computing and Applications, NeurIPS, RLC, SN Computer Science

Reviewer, 14th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026)

Program Committee, 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2026)

Reviewer, Nature Communications Physics (since 2025)

Reviewer, 39th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025)

Program Committee, 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2025)

Reviewer, 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025)

Program Committee, 17th Workshop on Adaptive and Learning Agents (ALA 2025)

Program Committee, 27th Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2025)

Program Committee, 34th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2025)

Program Committee, 1st Quantum Artificial Intelligence and Optimization (QAIO2025)

Reviewer, 13th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025)

Program Committee, 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2025)

Reviewer, 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024)

Reviewer, 1st Reinforcement Learning Conference (RLC 2024)

Program Committee, 33rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2024)

Reviewer, 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2024)

Reviewer, Neural Computing and Applications (since 2024)

Reviewer, Springer Nature Computer Science (since 2024)

Reviewer, 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024)

Reviewer, 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023)

Program Committee, 31st International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2023)

Talks

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“Distributional Shift Robust Reinforcement Learning,” #WeAreExperts Tech Talk @ Fraunhofer IKS (2024)

“Meta Heuristics for Quantum Circuit Design,” Munich Quantum Software Stack Exchange Meeting (2024)

“REACT: Revealing Evolutionary Action Consequence Trajectories for Interpretable Reinforcement Learning,” virtual paper presentation at the 16th International Conference on Evolutionary Computation Theory and Applications at IJCCI. (2024)

“Emergence in Multi-Agent Systems - A Safety Perspective,” oral paper presentation at the Rigorous Engineering of Collective Adaptive Systems (REOCAS) track at ISoLA. (2024)

“SEGym: Optimizing Large Language Model Assisted Software Engineering Agents with Reinforcement Learning,” oral paper presentation at the AI Assisted Programming track at AISoLA. (2024)

“CROP: Towards Distributional-Shift Robust Reinforcement Learning Using Compact Reshaped Observation Processing,” virtual paper presentation at the main track at IJCAI. (2023)

“DIRECT: Learning from Sparse and Shifting Rewards using Discriminative Reward Co-Training,” oral paper presentation at the 15th Adaptive and Learning Agents Workshop at AAMAS. (2023)