Curriculum Vitae

2023 - now

Max Planck Director
Department of Machine Learning and Systems Biology
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
Martinsried near Munich

2023 - now

Honorary professor
Machine Learning in the Life Sciences
Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich

2017-2023

Full Professor for Machine Learning & Computational Biology
Department Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE)
ETH Zürich

2014-2017

Associate Professor for Machine Learning & Computational Biology
Department Biosystems Science and Engineering
ETH Zürich

2011-2014

Associate Professor (W2) of Data Mining in the Life Sciences
Department of Computer Science
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

2008-2014

W2 Research Group Leader (tenured since 2010)
Machine Learning and Computational Biology Research Group
Max Planck Institutes Tübingen, Directors D. Weigel and B. Schölkopf

2007-2008

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Machine Learning Group, Chairholder: Prof. Zoubin Ghahramani
University of Cambridge

2005-2007

PhD Student & Research Assistant
Data Mining & Database Unit, Chairholder: Prof. Hans-Peter Kriegel
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

2004

Academic Visitor (for writing master thesis in Computer Science)
Machine Learning Group, Prof. Alex Smola, Prof. SVN Vishwanathan
NICTA Canberra, Australia

2002-2003

Student of Biology (M.Sc. in 2003)
Department of Zoology
University of Oxford

1999-2004

Student of Computer Science (Diplom in 2004)
Department of Mathematics, Computer Science & Statistics
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
(on leave for studying in Oxford during academic year 2002/03)

2026

Speaker and Scientific Coordinator of a new Germany-wide Max Planck School on Biomedical AI (32 co-PIs, 20-25 PhD students per year, 7 years)

2025-2026

Proceedings Chair of Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology conference (ISMB; 2025 with Prof. Tijana Milenkovic, 2026 with Prof. Jian Ma)

2023

Appointment as Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and as Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried

2023

Honorary professorship from LMU München, by nomination of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy

2022

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) Remarkable Output award (“Must-read paper of 2021”) as joint last author of Weis et al., Nature Medicine 28 : 164–174 (2022)

2022

Scientific Coordinator of Swiss National Data Stream on infection-related intensive care unit research (jointly with Prof. Adrian Egli (UZH), 5 million CHF funding, 21 partner labs, 3 years)

2021

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) Remarkable Output award (“Must-read paper of 2020”) as joint last author of Höllerer et al., Nature Communications 11 , Article number: 3551 (2020)

2021

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) Graduate Paper Award as supervisor and co-author of PhD student & co-awardee Thomas Gumbsch for Hyland et al, Nature Medicine, volume 26, pages 364–373 (2020)

2019

ELLIS Fellow and ELLIS Faculty Member (ellis.eu)

2018

Scientific Coordinator of a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network on  Machine Learning Frontiers in Precision Medicine (2019-2022, 8 countries, 14 labs, 14 PhD students, mlfpm.eu)

2018

One of " 25 individuals who have the potential to shape the next 25 years " according to Focus Magazine(Edition of January 13, 2018)

2018

Scientific Coordinator of the SPHN-PHRT Driver Project "Personalized Swiss Sepsis Study" (jointly with Dr. Adrian Egli (USB), 5.3 million CHF funding, 22 partner labs, 4 years)

2018

President of the Community of Special Interest for Machine Learning in Computational and Systems Biology in the International Society for Computational Biology, 2017-2020

2017

Golden Owl Award for Best Teaching in the Department Biosystems, ETH Zürich

2016

One of the " Top 40 under 40 in Science and Society " in Germany according to Business Journal Capital

2015

Starting Grant Awardee (ERC backup scheme of the Swiss National Science Foundation, 1.42 million CHF, 5 years, started May 1st, 2015)

2015

Elected Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Annual Meeting for  Machine Learning in Systems Biology(MLSB), 2015-2018

2015

One of the " Top 40 under 40 in State & Society " from Germany (including 12 scientists) according to Business Journal Capital

2014

One of the " Top 40 under 40 in Science " from Germany according to Business Journal Capital

2013

Alfried-Krupp-Förderpreis für junge Hochschullehrer (Annual Krupp award of 1 million EUR for one professor in Germany of age less than 38)

2012

Scientific Coordinator of a Marie Curie Initial Training Network on  Machine Learning in Personalized Medicine (2013-2016, 8 countries, 12 labs, 14 PhD students, mlpm.eu)

2009

NIPS Outstanding Student Paper Award as supervisor and co-author of PhD student & awardee Nino Shervashidze (out of 1105 submissions)

2007

Heinz-Schwärtzel-Dissertation-Award for Foundations of Computer Science (Best PhD thesis award in Computer Science at TUM, LMU and UniBw München)

2007

Scholar of the German Academic Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) as PhD student

2002

Scholar of the German Academic Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) as undergraduate student

1999

Scholar of the Bavarian Foundation for the Gifted (BayBFG)  (250 students out of 30,000 students per year in Bavaria)

1999

Scholar of the Stiftung Maximilianeum in Munich  (5-10 students out of 30,000 students per year in Bavaria)

2007

Ph.D. in Computer Science (obtained on July 5, 2007) , summa cum laude 
Data Mining & Database Unit, Chairholder: Prof. Hans-Peter Kriegel
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

2004

Diplom (M.Sc. equivalent) in Computer Science 
Department of Mathematics, Computer Science & Statistics
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

2003

M.Sc. in Biology 
Department of Zoology
University of Oxford

2026

Speaker and Scientific Coordinator of a new Germany-wide Max Planck School on Biomedical AI (32 co-PIs, 20-25 PhD students per year, 7 years)

2026

Co-PI in the BayVFP Joint Research Program Project “NovoPro” (Coordinator: T. Kucera, BioM; own budget: one PhD position, 2 years)

2025

Principal Investigator in the DFG-Cluster of Excellence BioSysteM (Speakers: Profs. Simmel, Schwille and Jungmann; own budget: one PhD position)

2024

Research Advisor and co-PI in a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (in total: 14 PhD students at 22 labs in 10 countries, network budget: 3.92 million EUR, own budget: 0.29 million EUR, 4 years)

2022

Scientific Coordinator of Swiss National Data Stream on infection-related intensive care unit research (jointly with Prof. Adrian Egli (UZH), 5 million CHF funding, 21 partner labs, 3 years)

2021

Co-applicant in SNSF Project “Derivation of pediatric sepsis phenotypes using machine learning applied to clinical, functional and genomic data from the swiss pediatric sepsis study” (own budget: 330.000 CHF, 4 years)

2020

Participant in National Centre of Competence in Research “AntiResist” (own budget: 200.000 CHF, 4 years)

2019

Scientific Coordinator of a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (in total: 14 PhD students at 14 labs in 8 countries, network budget: 3.64 million EUR, own budget: 0.3 million EUR, 4 years)

2018

Scientific Coordinator of the SPHN-PHRT Driver Project "Personalized Swiss Sepsis Study" (jointly with Dr. Adrian Egli (USB), 22 partner labs, total budget: 5.3 million CHF funding, own budget: 1.08 million CHF, 4 years)

2015

Partner node in Horizon2020 research network on MRI classification (own budget: 520.000 CHF, 4 years)

2014

Starting Grant for Significant Pattern Mining (ERC backup scheme of the Swiss National Science Foundation, 1.42 million CHF, 5 years)

2013

Alfried Krupp Award for Young Professors (1 million EUR, 5 years)

2013

Scientific Coordinator of a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (in total: 14 PhD students at 12 labs in 8 countries, network budget: 3.75 million EUR, own budget: 0.75 million EUR, 4 years)

2012

Co-founder & scientific mentor of the Tübingen-based bioinformatics service company Computomics (computomics.com)

2010

Research grant from DFG for Kernels on Large, Labeled Graphs (German Research Council, 3 years approx. 240.000 EUR)

Roles in the Max Planck Society

• Elected Guest Member of the Chemical-Physical-Technical Section (2024-)
• Elected Member of the Perspective Commission of the Biological-Medical Section (2023-)
• Member of the Standing Committee of the MPI for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen (2023-) and the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg (2025-)
• Member of the Biological-Medical Section (2023-)

Departmental Roles at ETH Zurich

• Deputy department chair (2021-2023)
• Responsible professor for departmental IT services (2019-2023)
• Chairman of the departmental doctoral committee (2016-2022)

Scientific Coordinator

• Max Planck School on Biomedical AI (Germany-wide, 32 fellows, 20-25 PhD students per year, min. 7 years)
• Marie Curie Initial Training Network on Machine Learning Frontier in Precision Medicine (2019-2022, 14 labs with 14 PhD students)
• SPHN-PHRT Driver Project Personalized Swiss Sepsis Study (2018-2022, jointly with Prof. Adrian Egli (USB), 22 partner labs)
• President of the Community of Special Interest for Machine Learning in Computational and Systems Biology in the International Society for Computational Biology, 2017-2020
• Elected Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Annual Meeting for Machine Learning in Systems Biology (MLSB, 2015-2020)
• Scientific Coordinator of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network on Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine (2013-2016, 12 labs with 14 PhD students)

Board Member or Expert Reviewer

• Scientific Advisory Board Member of Tübingen's Quantitative Biology Center QBIC (2015-2023)
• Steering Board Member of the Swiss Data Science Center (2015-2023)
• Steering Board Member of the ETH Nexus Personalized Medicine Platform (2014-2020)
• Expert Reviewer for the Swiss National Ethics Committee on "Machine Learning for the Analysis of Biobanks" (2014)

Editor

• OUP Bioinformatics (Associate Editor, 2021-2022)
• Journal of Machine Learning Research (Action Editor, 2013-2021)
• Springer’s Machine Learning Journal (Editorial Board Member 2011-2018)
• IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (Associate Editor 2012-2016)

Programme Chair

• Proceedings Chair of ISMB 2026 (with Prof. J. Ma. CMU)
• Proceedings Chair of ISMB/ECCB 2025 (with Prof. T. Milenkovic. Notre Dame)
• Machine Learning Frontiers in Precision Medicine Symposium 2022 (Munich, 60 participants)
• Machine Learning Frontiers in Precision Medicine Summer School 2021 (online, free to the public)
• MLFPM Winter Symposium 2021 (online, free to the public)
• Machine Learning Frontiers in Precision Medicine Summer School 2020 (online, free to the public)
• Machine Learning Frontiers in Precision Medicine Summer School 2019 (Basel/Muttenz, 100 participants)
• ECML/PKDD Journal Track Co-Chair 2019
• Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine Conference 2016 (Barcelona, 70 participants)
• Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine Summer School 2013 (Tübingen, 65 participants)
• Machine Learning for Systems Biology Meeting 2012 (Basel, 150 participants)
• Machine Learning Summer School 2011 (Purdue, co-organizer, 200 participants)
• NIPS Workshop: Personalized Medicine Workshop 2011 (Granada, Workshop with 50 participants)
• Mining and Learning on Graphs Meeting 2009 (Leuven, 100 participants)
• NIPS Workshop: Transfer Learning on Structured Data 2009 (Vancouver, 50 participants)
• NIPS Workshop: Structured Input Structured Output 2008 (Vancouver, 50 participants)

Furthermore, frequently area chair at the leading bioinformatics & computer science conferences (ISMB, RECOMB, ICML, NeurIPS, AISTATS, KDD, ISMB, ECML, ICML, IJCAI), reviewer for numerous leading journals, conferences, funding agencies and faculty recruiting committees in Machine Learning, Data Mining, Applied Mathematics, Bioinformatics and Genetics.