Hi! My name is Annalena (she/her) and I am a PhD student in Machine Learning at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen supervised by Bernhard Schölkopf. I am part of the IMPRS-IS graduate program and the interdisciplinary ELLIS PhD program. Previously, I completed my physics Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). For my Master’s thesis, I was fortunate to be supervised by Lukas Heinrich, Michael Kagan, and Vincent Stimper.

During my studies, I received a full scholarship by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Max Weber-Program. During my Bachelor, I was selected for the RISE-DAAD scholarship that allowed me to do an internship at the University of San Jose under the supervision of Mariela Porras-Chaverri.

Research Interests

Simulation-Based Inference and Neural Posterior Estimation for Gravitational Waves
Deep Generative Modelling for Physics
Differentiable Physics Simulators

I am always intersted in discussing ideas and potential collaborations that align with my research focus. Please reach out via email if you would like to have a chat!

Teaching

(September 2024) Gave invited lecture and tutorial on normalizing flows at the genAI workshop in Munich
(Summer 2024) Organized seminar Deep Learning for the Natural Sciences at TUM
(Winter 2021/22) Organized and prepared tutorials and student projects for lecture Introduction to Neural Networks for Physics Students at TUM

Talks and Conferences

(October 2024) Presented poster “DINGO: Neural Posterior Estimation for Gravitational Waves” at the 2nd Tübingen Women in Machine Learning Workshop where I won a WiML NeurIPS travel award for the best poster
(May 2024) Presented poster “DINGO: Neural Posterior Estimation for Gravitational Waves” at the PHYSTAT Workshop on Simulation Based Inference in Fundamental Physics in Munich
(April 2024) Gave overview talk “Neural Posterior Estimation with DINGO” at the AIslands Workshop on the Isle of Arran
(April 2024) Gave presentation about “Neural Posterior Estimation for Gravitational Waves” during my visit to the University of Nottingham
(June 2023) Presented poster at Nordic Probabilistic AI School supported by a full scholarship of DeepMind
(March 2023) Presented Master’s thesis at the annual meeting of the German Physical Society supported by the scholarship of the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation

Reviewing

NeurIPS Workshop Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences 2024 (4 papers)

Community Service

(Since August 2024) Organizer of diffusion model journal club
(Since January 2024) Organizer of Athena group meetings at MPI-IS Tübingen
(Since November 2023) Serving as mentor for ApplicAid
(March 2023 - October 2023) Organized seminar with external speakers for the Origins Data Science Lab
(October 2021 - October 2023) Elected as scholarship representative and committee member for the selection of new scholars of the Heinrich Böll Foundation

Diversity

I actively work towards a welcoming and encouraging environment for people from marginalized groups in physics, ML, and academia in general. In order to be transparent about my learning and contributing journey, I will keep track of the most recent events I attended and/or organized:

(Since November 2023) Supporting students that are disadvantaged in the German education system with their scholarship application through ApplicAid
(March 2024) Participated in “Unconscious Bias Training” offered by the Max Planck Society
(June 2023) Organized and conducted training on “How to deal with sexist comments” (repetition), served on “Women’s advisory board” for workshop “Advocates and Allies: Male Allies for Gender Equality”
(February 2023) Participated in seminar “Diversity as a reference frame for good leadership” by the Institute for Social Justice and Radical Diversity
(November 2022) Organized and conducted training on “How to deal with sexist comments”
(October 2022) Organized “Day of minorities in physics” and “Sharing experiences with sexism”
(March 2022) Attended seminar about classism
(October 2021 - 2022) Served as student representative of equality council at the TUM physics department and organized regular informal meetings for gender minorities in physics
(October 2021) Organized networking event for female physics students at TUM

Since students from marginalized groups face specific challenges and lack support, I decided to exclusively offer mentoring for people from these groups. If you are interested, please contact me via email and explain why you reach out to me, specifically.