WHO WE ARE

ALUMNI

Jinny Chien, Privacy & Security Expert

Jinny received her MSc in Computer Science from NCCU Taiwan. She joined SDSC as a Computer Scientist. Before joining SDSC, Jinny worked as a software engineer at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) to implement the Reference DataSet Distribution Service (RDSDS) project in Hinxton, Cambridge. RDSDS provides a centralised platform for dataset registration, management and distribution services. A core part of  RDSDS involved setting up an authentication and authorisation infrastructure and support multiple transfer protocols within the European life-sciences Infrastructure for biological Information (ELIXIR). Before that, Jinny worked for almost two years with the IT department of CERN. As a software engineer, she was responsible for setting up a virtual machine marketplace (Virtual Machine Image Catalogue, VMIC) based on OpenStack for the sharing of security appliances. Through this service they assisted more than 20 Asia Pacific sites.  Starting her professional career back in Taiwan, she was the first part of the mobile cyber security department at HTC and later joined the Grid/Cloud computing unit of the prime research organisation of Taiwan as a IT security staff. In her spare time, she likes reading Agatha Christie books and playing squash. She enjoys spending time outdoors.

Jinny is moving back to the UK  where she will be a security analyst at Cambridge Assessment that belongs to the university of Cambridge. 

Samuel Picek, Sr. Computer Scientist

Sam received his MSc degree in computer science from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. He previously worked for over half a decade on solving problems in distributed computing and data engineering in the IT industry. He worked in all stages of software development, from idea to production deployment, several times. Sam has broad interests from software design and distributed computing to statistics and machine learning.

Samuel has decided to pursue a PhD at the computer science department of University of Zürich in the area of research in deep learning.

Chenhao Cui, Data Scientist

Chenhao received his PhD in Statistical Science from University College London, his MSc in Optical Science from Imperial College London and his BEng in Optics from Fudan University (Shanghai, China). During his PhD studies he was involved in several data science projects with a large industrial group, where he contributed in developing customized machine learning tools for food industry.

He’s now working as a data scientist in Bühler China. He develops data analytical models for Bühler’s IoT platform. They aim to improve productivity,  reduce energy, water and material wastes for their customers.

Dorina Thanou, Sr. Data Scientist

Dorina is a Senior Data Scientist at the Swiss Data Science Centre since December 2016. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Signal Processing Laboratory (LTS4) of EPFL, Switzerland. She got her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Communication Systems and Electrical Engineering respectively, both from EPFL, and her Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece. In summer 2014, she was a research intern with Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA, working on the compression of 3D point clouds. Her research interests include graph-based signal processing for data representation and analysis, as well as machine learning, with a particular focus on the design of interpretable models for personalized medicine.

After four years at the Swiss Data Science Center, Dorina has joined the pole of the Center for Intelligent Systems (CIS) at EPFL on Medicine and Healthcare as an AI Research Scientist

Emma Jablonski, Data Science Engineer

Emma graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA, with a BA in physics and computer science in 2013. Most recently since then, she has built systems to facilitate computational molecular dynamics research at D. E. Shaw Research and worked on exoplanet climate modeling in the astrobiology group at NASA GISS, both in New York City. Her research interests include networks and complexity as applied to life in the universe and also to the flow of scientific information through academia and society. The latter research interest has motivated her to volunteer at the World Science Festival in NYC, volunteer-teach computer science, attend open science hackathons.

She is now attending a PhD program in History of Science at UC San Diego, CA, USA.

Cédric Silvestri, Graphic Design Trainee

In 2017, Cédric joined a school called CPNV (Professional Center of Northern Vaud). He spent a year at the SDSC as a graphic design intern and has now returned to school to get his diploma. At the end of his training, He will get a CFC Mediamaticien (“médiamatique” includes design, photography, marketing and computing skills).

Now he’s continuing his study at his school.

Tanja Käser, Sr Data Scientist

Tanja joined the SDSC as a senior data scientist in June 2019. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University working on educational data sciences. Before that, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich and as a consultant for Disney Research Zurich and Dybuster AG. Tanja received her PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich. Her research is in the field of artificial intelligence in education and she is especially interested in modeling and predicting human thinking and behavior in computer-based systems.

Tanja has relocated to Lausanne and is now an Assistant Professor at EPFL.

Anastasia Pentina, Sr. Data Scientist

Anastasia got her PhD in Machine Learning from IST Austria and Master’s degree in Mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. Prior to joining SDSC, she worked at IST Austria as a postdoc in Computer Vision and Machine Learning group, focusing on knowledge transfer methods in machine learning.

Asya relocated to Berlin and now works as a machine learning researcher at Bayer.

An Jacobs, Executive Assistant

An joined the Swiss Data Center in August 2017 as an Executive Assistant. An holds a Bachelor’s degree in English, French and History teaching. She worked in several HR roles (recruitment and development) for Manpower Belgium. After having moved to Switzerland in 2008, An has worked in a Private Wealth Management Division of a well-known American bank. 

An relocated to Dubaï with her family for a period of 2 years. 

Gabrielle Gantos, Data Scientist

Gabrielle received her MSc in The Foundations of Data Science from Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, and a BA in Economics from Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA. She previously worked for over half a decade performing data and risk analysis in the energy industry. Gabrielle directed her experiences and education towards data science in order to apply her skills and interests in a variety of domains. Gabrielle enjoys hiking and skiing, new foods and cooking, and is training for her first marathon.

Gabrielle has relocated to Colorado for family reasons.

Nicole Andriaharifara, Graphic Design Trainee

In 2015, Nicole joined a school called CPNV (Professional Center of Northern Vaud). She spent a year at the SDSC as a graphic design intern and has now returned to school to get her diploma. At the end of her training, she will get a CFC Mediamaticienne (“médiamatique” includes design, photography and computing skills).

Mathias Humbert, Sr. Data Scientist

Mathias received his Ph.D. in computer and communication sciences from EPFL in 2015. He then spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher in the Center for IT-Security, Privacy, and Accountability (CISPA) at Saarland University, Germany, where he worked on genomic privacy and privacy in social networks. His current research interests lie at the intersection of privacy and machine learning, with a special application focus on biomedical data.  He is currently the lead scientist for the SDSC of the PHRT project “DPPH: Data Protection in Personalized Health”. He is also co-principal investigator of a project funded by the Leenaards Foundation on evaluating and preventing privacy risks in biomedical databases.

Mathias has decided to take a Scientific Project Manager position at the new Cyber-Defense Campus (armasuisse) on the EPFL Innovation Park.

Jiří Kunčar, Sr. Computer Scientist

Jiří is a Sr Software Engineer with a master degree in Computer Science from Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, and a M.Sc. degree in Software Engineering from Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden. He has been a staff member at CERN — European Organisation for Nuclear Research, Switzerland for five years. Before joining the SDSC, Jiří was a core member of Invenio development team working on a framework that covers all aspects of digital library management or document repository on the web. During his work at RedHat and in his free time he has contributed to many open-source packages. He is active as a maintainer of several Python packages and contributor to libraries around Flask framework.

Jiří now lives in Bilbao and joined StubHub (eBay) as a software engineer.

Sandra Savchenko-de Jong, Sr. Computer Scientist

Sandra has studied astrophysics at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (the Netherlands) and obtained her PhD from the Observatoire de Paris (France). Afterwards she worked as a Scala developer at one of the largest banks in the Netherlands. At SDSC (Lausanne) she contributes to the RENKU platform as a software engineer, and she is involved in several on-going data science projects, including a project on food safety with a large industrial group.

Sandra relocated to Kiev and now works for BT9 as a data analyst.

Johann Thiebaut, Sr. Computer Scientist

Johann holds a Master’s Degree from École Polytechnique, Saclay and joined the Swiss Data Science Center in early 2017. Before joining the team Johann-Michael has worked at IBM Research in Dublin where he covered a variety of topics such as Big Data Analytics and Predictive Maintenance. He is now focusing on development and deployment of the Renku platform along with projects involving industry partners.
Johann joined Google Zurich in January 2019 and is working on the Google Assistant.

Julien Eberle, Sr. Computer Scientist

Julien joined the Swiss Data Science Center in January 2017, after he got his PhD degree, as well as his Master degree with an Excellence Fellowship, from EPFL’s school of Computer and Communication Sciences. In parallel, he is one of the co-founder of Arcanite Solutions, a growing consulting company, with some former PhD fellows and friends. During his PhD he had the chance to work at the Nokia Research Center, located on EPFL’s campus, on context awareness in mobile devices. He also spent half a year at Nestlé/Nespresso designing and setting up the infrastructure for centrally managing the development of mobile applications for all Nestlé’s subsidiary brands.
As of 2019, Julien is dedicating all of his time to Arcanite, the successful start-up he co-founded a couple of years ago