🧠Independent Researcher
Biography
I’m an independent researcher working on Mechanistic Interpretability for LLMs. I was a MATS scholar and worked with Alex Makelov and Neel Nanda on Sparse Autoencoders and Distributed Alignment Search for feature detection and subspace activation patching. Previously, I was a MSc AI student at the University of Amsterdam, where I worked on brain-like interpretable spatiotemporal Computer Vision models, supervised by Prof Iris Groen and Amber Brands.
Further, I was a graduate student at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where I worked on Reinforcement Learning, Decision Making, and Reward Sensitization and conducted fiber photometry experiments in the Nucleus Accumbens of mice, supervised by Prof Jeff Beeler.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Mechanistic Interpretability
- Systems Neuroscience
M.Sc. Artificial Intelligence
University of Amsterdam
M.Sc. Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Center, City University of New York
B.Sc. IT-Systems Engineering
Hasso-Plattner-Institut, Potsdam
Experience
Scholar (ML Alignment Theory)
SERIMATS (Stanford Existential Risk Initiative)- Researched Mechanistic Interpretability for LLMs with Alex Makelov, mentored by Neel Nanda (3 months full-time, 4 months part-time)
- Worked on Sparse Autoencoders and Distributed Alignment Search for feature detection and subspace activation patching
Consultant for Data Science and Cloud Computing
Datametric- Developed Data Science solutions for major companies (Vattenfall, Ikea, T-Mobile, Vesting-finance) using AWS, Sagemaker, and Azure ML (part-time)
Student Consultant
SUGAR Network, HPI, KIT- Developed a data-driven product from scratch for a major German insurance company
- Applied Design Thinking and data-driven decision-making
- Developed an application to support the product
AI Engineer (Intern and Working Student)
QiO Technologies Ltd.- Led an AI project for a British water company
- Built an end-to-end computer vision pipeline for sewer damage detection using transfer learning, data cleaning, hyperparameter tuning, and image visualization
Research Assistant
Digital Health Center, Hasso-Plattner-Institute- Developed the frontend for a molecular tumor board
- Designed a psychological test battery for epilepsy research
Research Assistant
Digital Health Center, Hasso-Plattner-Institute- Continued work on the frontend for a molecular tumor board
- Enhanced the psychological test battery for epilepsy research
Education
M.Sc. Artificial Intelligence
University of Amsterdam- Visited in-depth courses about Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Information Retrieval and did a research project about Privacy in complex-valued DNNs
- Research in complex-valued neural networks for privacy protection and equivariant spatiotemporal CNNs for scene representation learning
- Thesis on brain-like interpretable spatiotemporal Computer Vision models with adaptation mechanisms, supervised by Prof Iris Groen and Amber Brands
M.Sc. Cognitive Neuroscience
Graduate Center, City University of New York- Investigating neural correlates of motivation and effort-based decision making in hyperdopaminergic (DAT-KD) and conditional D2-receptor KO (fDRD2 x Adora2a::Cre) mice using fiber photometry in Nucleus Accumbens
- Thesis on interaction between dopamine and acetylcholine during cocaine- or amphetamine-induced drug sensitization, supervised by Prof Jeff Beeler
- Developed Fibermagic, a software package for fiber photometry data analysis
- Developed Magicbox, a platform to control operand boxes and neural data acquisition systems wirelessly
- Hired and trained two undergraduate students on experimental neurobiology
B.Sc. IT-Systems Engineering
Hasso-Plattner-Institut, Potsdam- Created an online course on Deep Learning for Computer Vision for 13k participants
- Developed an Android App, Backend, and Dashboard for unobstrusive health monitoring of wearable devices for connected healthcare
- Thesis on “Detecting Several Types of Distractions During Work Using Wireless EEG-Devices Applying Machine Learning Techniques”, supervised by Prof. Dr. Bert Arnrich
Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, Sklearn, Matplotlib, Plotly, Seaborn, Statsmodels
Lightning, TensorFlow, WandB
AWS, Sagemaker, Athena, EMR
Kotlin, Java, SQL, Arduino, 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, Design Thinking
Sparse Autoencoders, transformer-lens, LLMs
WandB, PyTorch, Einops, Einsum
Pandas, Matplotlib, Plotly, Seaborn
Stereotactic brain surgery, viral injections, fiber implantation, dual-color fiber photometry
Transgenic mouse colony management, PCR genotyping, conditioning, operand boxes, IP-injections
Perfusion, cryostatic/vibratome slicing, immunohistochemistry, EEG data analysis
3D-printing, computer vision, software development, electronics, raspberry pi