PyCon DE & PyData 2026

Data/MLOps Engineer at Zalando. During my career I always worked along data scientists to build robust ML pipelines. I am very enthusiastic about designing and implementing scalable and robust systems.

Aimilios works as a software engineer for Frontiers Media SA. With a passion for solving technical challenges and a commitment to sharing his knowledge in different aspects of computer engineering, including but not limited to ETL pipelines and optimization, improving the in-house tooling, contributing to different architectural decisions, he makes a valuable contribution to his team's objectives. Prior to joining Frontiers, he gained experience working as a Devops engineer at CERN, where he actively contributed in projects related to cloud computing and disaster recovery, automation, observability and databases. He holds a MEng in Electrical and Computer Engineering from National Technical University of Athens.

Senior R&D Engineer at Ansys with a PhD in computational science from RWTH Aachen University. Work in the area of simulations, machine learning and AI safety.

I am a Data and AI enthusiast with over 14 years of experience across the full data lifecycle — from ingestion and transformation to analytics and machine learning operations.

My expertise spans modern data architecture, ETL/ELT pipelines, Big Data technologies, and cloud-native solutions. I have deep hands-on experience designing and implementing end-to-end data and ML pipelines that are reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient, driving value through automation and operational excellence.

I’m passionate about leveraging data and AI to create impactful, efficient, and intelligent systems that empower both business and technology teams.

Alejandro is the Director of the Markets AI, Data & Platform at Zalando SE, where he is responsible for petabyte-scale AI & Data platforms that power the Pricing, Traffic and Trading technology across the group. He is also Scientific Advisor at the Institute for Ethical AI, where he has led contributions to EU policy, including the AI Act, the Data Act and the Digital Services Act, among others. Alejandro is currently appointed as AI Expert at the United Nations and the European Commission, and serves as Board Member at the ACM's Board of Directors.

Alexander C.S. Hendorf is an independent AI and open-source strategy advisor working with companies in regulated industries. With 20+ years of hands-on experience across 50+ technologies — from the Python ecosystem to vector databases — he bridges the gap between boardroom decisions and technical execution. Alexander is a Python Software Foundation Fellow, heads the Open Source Working Group of the KI Bundesverband, serves on the board of the Python Software Verband, and has delivered 100+ talks in 15+ countries.

I am a data engineer at Blue Yonder, where I build infrastructure for large-scale demand forecasting solutions. My career spans nearly a decade in academia, high-tech R&D, and industry, during which python has been a constant tool across a wide variety of environments. During my PhD in physics, I used python to analyze time-series data from some of the world’s most precise quantum sensors in the search for dark matter. Earlier in my career, I applied python to data analysis and modeling in high-precision laser gyroscope R&D, and today I continue to use it to develop robust, production-grade machine learning systems.

Alina Dallmann is an AI Engineer at scieneers GmbH. As a computer scientist, she combines her passion for classical software engineering with modern, data-driven projects. Most recently, her focus has been on building production-ready Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.

I am a software and data engineer working on data pipelines at QuantCo. In a previously life I looked for dark matter in particle collisions.

Lead Data Scientist at Merck Healthcare KGaA
Clinical Measurement Sciences, Biomarker development

see Linkedin

I am the Technical Lead for Data & AI in the Energy Retail Team at E.ON Digital Technology. Unofficially, I describe myself as a Software Engineer with a Data affinity. I write both code and texts.

Being a member of the E.ON GenAI Core team, I've been developing Generative AI solutions for different business units within the E.ON family. Multilingual Search, LLMs, Agentic RAG, Knowledge Graphs - a small selection of buzzwords for our daily activities.

Machines listen to me in SQL, Python, Ruby, AWK, Bash, YAML and (hopefully very soon) Rust. My beloved machines mostly live in the Azure Cloud.

I am passionate about building technical teams around a goal and having fun crafting solid software.

You can talk to me in German, English, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Italian, and Spanish. Latin may also be worth trying.

I still strongly believe in non-dumb statistical approaches to AI. The next step will only be possible through a combination of the humanities and science.

Born hacker. Curious human. I've started a couple of companies. I liked AI before it was cool, I swear.

Annika Herbert is a Solution Architect in the AI & Data Unit at sovanta, working on data-driven and AI-powered solutions. With a background in Data Science, she enjoys making AI more approachable, tangible, and easy to explain, especially to non-technical audiences. Coming from a Python developer’s perspective, she likes to explore new fields through hands-on experimentation and learning by doing. Outside of work, she enjoys dancing, concerts, and baking chocolate-filled treats.

Worked on multi-modal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and agentic LLM systems. Designed ingestion and retrieval pipelines across text, video, and structured data to integrate common knowledge platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint. Focused on scalable Azure-based infrastructure, multilingual and multimodal document processing, and continuous evaluation for reliability. Gathered experience in building browser-driven agents using modern orchestration frameworks and MCP integration.

I started as a data scientist, building ML microservices and deploying models into production. I later moved into a consulting role, where I helped adapt ML models to real customer needs, translate business problems into measurable objectives, interpret results, and monitor model performance over time.

Over the years, my work gradually shifted towards GenAI. I now design and build AI agents from scratch for internal process optimisation, support colleagues in adopting GenAI and agentic AI responsibly, and promote security-aware practices in solution development. A large part of my work focuses on evaluating and monitoring agent behaviour in real environments to ensure these systems remain useful, safe, and trustworthy after deployment.

Axel Buddendiek is an astronomer turned data scientist. After finishing his PhD in 2015, Axel started working in data teams at different companies, continuously learning and building up new skills. In 2022, he joined the Analytics Department at REWE Group as a senior data scientist. When Axel is not at work, he enjoys jogging, reading, and watching football.

Bastian is a Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer at idealo Internet GmbH, where he focuses on large-scale offer cataloging and high-throughput machine learning systems. Before joining idealo in 2025, he was an Assistant Professor at Linköping University in Sweden, leading a research group in 3D computer vision.

He completed his PhD in 2020 at Leibniz University Hannover with a thesis on 3D human pose estimation and subsequently spent two years at the University of British Columbia in Canada as a PostDoc, expanding his research into broader areas of 3D computer vision and teaching related courses.

Benjamin Gutzmann is a 32 year old Python/data engineer and maintainer of Wetterdienst, currently at Otto Group data.works (Data Engineer since 2023; previously Junior Data Engineer), working across Generative AI and data engineering on GCP with Python, SQL, Argo, and Terraform. He has built the Wetterdienst library at earth observations (hobby project, since 2018). Before his start into work life he has studied Hydrology (BSc, MSc) at TU Dresden.

Bernhard is a Senior Data Scientist at Merck with a PhD in deep learning and over 7 years of experience in applying data science and data engineering within different industries. For more information you can connect with him on LinkedIn. 🙂

Hey I’m Bruno, I’m an experienced Senior Software Engineer passionate about building innovative solutions in fast-paced and evolving startup environments.

I consider myself a generalist when it comes to software engineering and I enjoy working at the intersection of engineering leadership and software development. Currently I’m working as a team lead in a startup in Lausanne. My team is mainly responsible for building and scaling the main platform of our solution. Next to this I’m responsible for the overall software architecture of our solution.

Brazilian software engineer, open source maintainer, and co-founder of Cumbuca Dev, a community-driven initiative that supports underrepresented people entering and thriving in technology through real-world practice, open source collaboration, and education. With over a decade of professional experience, Camila focuses on backend engineering, developer experience, tooling and automation.

She is the creator and core maintainer of ScanAPI, a Python library for automated API integration testing and live documentation that has gathered widespread adoption and community contributions. ScanAPI has been recognized by GitHub as part of initiatives to strengthen the open source supply chain and is used by developers internationally. Camila’s work spans not only code but also documentation, automation pipelines, and contributor experience practices that make open source projects more sustainable.

Camila was the first Brazilian accepted into the GitHub Sponsors program, breaking new ground for maintainers in her country. She is also featured as one of ~50 global open source maintainers in the maintane.rs project, invited by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to share her personal journey and perspectives on how open source can unlock opportunities in tech.

Her engagement extends to speaking and mentoring at technical conferences around the world, including Pyjamas, EuroPython, Python Brasil, DjangoCon EU, and others, where she has presented both talks and hands-on workshops.

Through Cumbuca Dev, Camila advocates for practical learning and structured contributions as pathways to real experience, helping people from diverse backgrounds build skills, confidence, and visibility before their first job. She believes that open source is not just code — it is a vehicle for community, opportunity, and empowerment — and her work reflects a commitment to making technology spaces more accessible, collaborative, and humane.

People > Tech 💜

Co-Lead AI Startup Rising, Hessian AI Co-leads the BMWE-funded "AI Startup Rising" program at hessian.AI. Previously built the SpeedUpSecure accelerator and advised startups on funding, business models, and IT security at TU Darmstadt.

Celeste Horgan is a Sr. OSS Developer Advocate and OSPO Lead at Snowflake. Previous roles include work at Aiven, The Linux Foundation, Stripe and commercetools. She has worked in open source since 2020, is a former contributor to the Kubernetes project, and currently immersed in the Postgres open source ecosystem. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and she regularly speaks internationally at technical conferences.

After having a career as a Data Scientist and Developer Advocate, Cheuk dedicated her work to the open-source community. Currently, she is working as a developer advocate for JetBrains. She has co-founded Humble Data, a beginner Python workshop that has been happening around the world. Cheuk also started and hosted a Python podcast, PyPodCats, which highlights the achievements of underrepresented members in the community. She has served the EuroPython Society board for two years and is now a fellow and director of the Python Software Foundation.

Christoph Frey is a Quantitative Researcher and Portfolio Manager at a family office in Hamburg and Research Fellow at the Centre for Financial Econometrics, Asset Markets and Macroeconomic Policy at Lancaster University. Before this, he was the leading quantitative researcher for systematic multi-asset strategies at Berenberg Bank and worked as an Assistant Professor at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Christoph published research on Bayesian Econometrics and specializes in financial econometrics and portfolio optimization problems.

After finishing my PhD in high energy physics, I worked as software developer and as solution architect on projects in various industries. In the end I ended up at The Mobility House Energy, because I want to work towards a zero-zero future. Nowadays I am working as the Head of Tech VGI.

I work in the Large-Scale Data Science division at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), and I lead the development of Heat, an open-source distributed tensor framework designed for high-performance data analytics. My work focuses on scaling scientific Python applications across multi-node, multi-GPU clusters.

My background is in astrophysics, I joined JSC in 2018 to co-design distributed analytics for scientific domains including aerospace and Earth system modeling. Since 2021, I have led the Heat project, focusing on technical user support, community growth, and project dissemination.

I have Statistics & Actuarial background
I'm an Actuary during the day
and AI Scientist in the free time

Cosima Meyer is a data scientist with a strong focus on making machine learning models explainable and accessible. Passionate about trustworthy AI, she is committed to building systems that are not only technically robust but also transparent and ethical. As a Google's Women Techmakers Ambassador and an active member of PyLadies, Cosima is dedicated to fostering inclusive and collaborative communities, working to bridge the two groups and create spaces for knowledge-sharing and growth.

During her PhD studies at the University of Mannheim, Cosima discovered her enthusiasm for sharing knowledge through technical blog posts and developing open-source software. Her work reflects a blend of technical expertise and a passion for community building, inspiring others to explore, learn, and contribute to the fields of AI and data science.

Daniel is an AI/ML Engineer and Cloud Solutions Architect with hands-on experience in building AI-driven solutions across diverse domains, including data science, machine learning and generative AI. He has led and contributed to impactful projects across a range of industries such as EdTech, Assistive Technology, HealthTech, FinTech, and Supply Chain Technology, consistently delivering solutions that address real-world challenges.

As a community champion at Data Scientists Network (DSN), Daniel has won multiple Data Science and AI hackathons, and has led AI communities in Nigeria, driving innovation and knowledge sharing. He is also a technical writer, sharing insights and expertise through articles published on leading online platforms in the Data Science and AI space.

In his spare time, Daniel enjoys reading and reviewing research papers, as well as playing chess. He is driven by a deep passion to build solutions that create meaningful societal impact and foster socio-economic development

Daniel Finnan is a 2nd year PhD candidate at the Lirsa laboratory, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), in Paris. His thesis focuses on decentralized finance, specifically decentralized exchanges, applying a quantitative methodology using blockchain data, techniques in data science, and time series econometrics. He codes in Python, R, and occasionally Rust and JavaScript, specifically using Python to manage data pipelines. He has a professional certification in full-stack development and holds a Master’s degree in Economics, with a specialization in Economic, Digital and Data strategies from CNAM’s department of Economics, Finance, Insurance and Banking.

Darya Petrashka is a Senior Data Scientist at SLB with 6 years of experience, focusing on NLP and GenAI. She is passionate about using data for problem-solving, with a strong interest in AWS services. An AWS Community Builder, Darya actively shares her expertise through public speaking at various industry events, including AWS Community Days, Summits, and PyCons. A dedicated learner, Darya continually hones her skills by participating in workshops, courses, and tech schools.

Dennie is Microsoft MVP in AI and Developer Technologies and has experience in accessibility with Microsoft technologies. In daily life Dennie is president and developer at DDSoft, a nonprofit that connects IT to People who are less tech-savvy. Dennie invented technical solutions and systems to help people with disabilities to participate in their daily life. Thanks to his autism he's the right man at the right spot to contribute as a volunteer in function of people with disabilities.

Dennis Schulz is a Senior Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting. He holds a PhD in low temperature physics from the University of Heidelberg. Besides being a programmer, he organized and hosted the TV show Quasi Klar for RNF, published a book that was translated to Korean and Russian, and won Science Slam competitions all over Germany. As a part of the Innovation Hacking team at TNG, he worked on different AI showcases, fine-tuning embeddings, and data mining.

Dominik is a Senior Data Scientist with multiple years of experience in various industries. Enthusiastic about data and technology, he creates solutions that deliver real business value.

I am a senior MLOps engineer at Malt. A long time ago I studied physics in Amsterdam, after which I moved to Berlin to discover the world of data science. Currently I'm working at Malt exploring the boundaries between devops and data.

Irena Bojarovska is an Applied Scientist at Zalando SE, focusing on time‑series forecasting and demand prediction across 24+ markets.

Originally from Macedonia, she earned a BSc and an MSc in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science in Russia and a PhD in Applied Harmonic Analysis from TU Berlin. She began her industry career as an analyst at Air Berlin and, since 2017, has worked on causal inference for marketing, automation, demand forecasting, hierarchical reconciliation, and time‑series foundation models at Zalando. Outside work she leads a math circle for children at Lyzeum 2 and enjoys spending time with her family.

Mathematician (Ph.D., Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) and data scientist. I am interested in interdisciplinary applications of mathematical methods, particularly time series analysis, Bayesian methods, and causal inference. Active open source developer (PyMC, PyMC-Marketing, and NumPyro, among others). For more info, please visit my personal website https://juanitorduz.github.io

Dr. Maria Börner holds a Ph.D. in physics from CERN and DESY and is an expert in the field of AI. She is the head of the AI Competence Center at Westernacher Solutions. In this position, she is responsible for developing AI tools for government, church, and justice organizations. She strengthens the company's internal AI comptences and promotes them externally. She is also the deputy chairwoman of the Legal Tech working group at Bitkom and the German ambassador of the Women in AI network. Maria has worked in the field of AI for over eight years, focusing on responsible and ethical AI.

I spent over 10 years as a consultant setting up data pipelines, data models, and cloud infrastructure for clients ranging from government to fintech to retail and energy, before joining MotherDuck to help people and their AI agents make the most of the platform through documentation, examples, and other content.

I am the co-author of The Fundamentals of Analytics Engineering, and I love writing about all things data — both at MotherDuck and on my personal blog at dumky.net.

Eduard is a technical leader with a background in distributed systems, platform engineering, and security. He works as a Lead Engineer in regulated environments, designing and operating Kubernetes-based platforms where reliability, compliance, and developer experience must coexist. His work focuses on architecture under real-world constraints, supply-chain security, and building systems that remain adaptable over time. Eduard regularly advises engineering leaders on technical strategy and decision-making at scale, bridging hands-on experience with long-term architectural thinking.

I am a data scientist at Steadforce, building LLM and agent workflows with Python from cloud to edge. My current focus is AI literacy: helping teams understand what LLMs, RAG, and agents actually do beyond the hype. I co-designed “AI Factory,” a game where players break and fix AI systems to build real intuition.

About
I build solutions that make technology work for people. With experience in AI, data, and automation, I turn real needs into tools that make work faster and smarter.

Trained as a physicist, I moved into data science and innovation to make a more direct impact on real-world problems. Since then, I’ve worked across telecommunications, energy, e-commerce, and insurance—helping teams create technology that delivers real value.

One highlight was helping build a GenAI platform used by more than 48,000 people, saving over 2 million working hours every year. I also contributed to an intelligent system that helps over 20,000 employees share knowledge more easily and work together more effectively.

I enjoy learning, improving, and working with others who want to make a difference. Let’s connect and explore new ideas together.

Falko Schindler is a software engineer at Zauberzeug and a creator of the open-source web UI framework, NiceGUI. He specializes in building the company’s core software stack for robotics and automation projects.

Software Development Manager at ReversingLabs, leading teams responsible for large-scale data processing, data quality, and technical writing. Specialized in turning complex systems into something that works, produces correct results, and is documented well enough that someone else can understand it, usually in that order.

Florian is Head of Data Science & Mathematical Modeling at inovex GmbH, an IT project center driven by innovation and quality, focusing its services on ‘Digital Transformation’. He holds a PhD in mathematics, has more than 10 years of experience in predictive & prescriptive analytics use-cases and likes everything math 🤯

Who am I?

I'm a scientific researcher with a PhD in astroparticle physics at the Heidelberg University with a strong will to get out of academia – but in my life I worked many jobs and each of them changed me somehow. I gave up trying to solve the puzzle.

What do I like?

I'm passionate about coding, gaming and cats – well, about many other things, actually. For a cat-loving nerd, I'm surprisingly at ease among people, and on a stage.

What makes me comfortable?

If it's about working, kind of everything? Be it coding (mainly Python, Julia, C++, Fortran, IDL, SQL), developing hardware prototypes, scouting for a publishing house, or working in a bookshop. If it's about life – listening to people talking at ease, and entertain them.

What makes me uncomfortable?

People saying that the AI will bring the world to an end. I'm positive that if it happens, it's more likely it'll be because of them rather than the AI.

Anything else?

I'm Italian, but it's not my fault.

Co-Founder & CEO of Prior Labs.
Professor, Tabular Foundation Models and AutoML.
We‘re hiring: PriorLabs.ai/careers

Frank is deeply passionate about technological advancements and a co-founder of neunzehn innovations, a company specializing in AI solutions. His professional background combines entrepreneurial experience—having established an innovation and strategy consultancy focused on strategy and deep tech—with several years at a major software corporation. Throughout his tenure in the software industry, he contributed to multiple product and service launches, working across various teams to bring new offerings to market. Outside the office, he enjoys discovering new horizons in the camper van.

Hi my name is Franz and I’m an open source and python enthuisiast:

• father of 3 girls
• major in psychology
• chess hobbiyst
• former competitive ultimate frisbee player
• likes cooking and baking sourdough bread

Freya Bruhin ("The Compiler") is a long-time contributor and maintainer of both the pytest framework and various plugins. Discovering pytest in 2015, Freya has since given talks and conducted workshops about pytest at various conferences and companies. Freya's main project, qutebrowser (a keyboard-focused web browser), has grown from a hobby to a donation-funded part-time job.

Friederike Bauer (First-time-speaker on technical conference) studied Social Science in Stuttgart and Social and Economic Data Science in Konstanz. She works as a Data Scientist for &effect and develops software solutions as a Frontend-Developer.

I am a Machine Learning Researcher at distil labs, where I work on knowledge distillation and tool calling for small language models. I did my PhD at Charles University in Prague, focusing on Neural Architecture Search and surrogate models.
I believe not every problem needs a large and complex model. Both during my PhD and at distil labs, I have been exploring how small models fare compared to state of the art. I enjoy analyzing the problem first - understanding the limitations of both small and large models is what helps us really solve it.

It's been more than 40 years since Gabriela first touched a computer keyboard. Becoming a hacker at a young age out of necessity, it's not like you could buy computer games in East Germany, she learned how copy protection schemes work, setting the foundation for a lifelong passion for a deep understanding of computers and getting them to do things they weren't supposed to do. The passion turned into a career of 30 years in tech, more than 20 of them in information security. She's been active in numerous roles at the Chaos Computer Club over the years, and after a colorfuil career in many roles is currently earning a living as CISO of mobile.de - selling used cars is a very ethical path, considering all the options in cyber security. But it's not just security, Gabriela also has a passion for programming languages, having been the core maintainer of open source Dylan compilers for many years, even being paid for maintenance of a Lisp compiler for a while. But if a job needs to be done, more often than not she reaches out for Python to this day.

I am a Software Architect at a manufacturing company, specializing in building reliable software products and establishing solid DevOps practices—often from the ground up. My ongoing work with Python spans automation, scripting, and infrastructure, helping me to quickly deliver solutions even in “greenfield” situations.
Curiosity drives much of what I do—I’m always eager to understand how things work and love tackling technical challenges through hands-on experimentation. When I’m not engineering or optimizing workflows, you’ll find me exploring new recipes in the kitchen, running small coding side projects, or discovering the world in my own sometimes-cautious, adventure-seeking way.
Outside of work, I enjoy deep conversations about technology and society, and occasionally share my thoughts and experiments on my personal blog. I like to think individuality and curiosity matter as much in tech as they do in everyday life.

Python Developer & Trainer
Specializing in Machine Learning and Parallel Computing with NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, MPI, Dask, and more.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. I am currently investigating the impact of non-ideal processes within protostellar and protoplanetary disks on their formation, evolution, and production of winds and collimated outflows.

Gift Ojeabulu is a data scientist, AI/ML practitioner, and community builder with over six years of experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence, software engineering, and developer advocacy. He has led and scaled global AI communities, including growing Iterative.ai’s community to over 30,000 data, ML, and AI professionals worldwide. Gift has curated hundreds of technical content pieces annually and has worked with AI startups such as Deci AI and DagsHub to shape developer relations and content strategies for highly technical audiences. He is a four-time AWS Community Builder in Machine Learning and AI, serving as a board advisor to DevNetwork (USA) in the areas of artificial intelligence and developer advocacy.

As the co-founder of Data Community Africa (DCA), the largest Black data and AI community on the continent, Gift has led initiatives that support education, open-source collaboration, and professional growth, including the African Data Community Newsletter, which reaches over 2,500 subscribers across 80 countries. He has contributed to major ecosystem efforts such as DatafestAfrica and leads the Lagos MLOps community, where he focuses on practical MLOps, large language models, and open-source AI development. Through his work, Gift actively advances Africa’s data and AI ecosystem by connecting local talent to global opportunities and fostering sustainable innovation.

I joined cognee early to help build that engine, and I've been growing with it since. My corner: growth and developer ecosystem, integrations, technical content, partnerships, community. I like the work that sits between building something and getting it into people's hands - understanding the need, driving adoption, and making complex infrastructure accessible. Before cognee, I was an AI engineer consultant and worked in advanced analytics in an enterprise. I took lots of lessons in how enterprise teams actually adopt new tech and that still shapes how I think about developer experience today.

Technical University of Munich (M.Sc.) and Boğaziçi (B.Sc.) alumni, member of 2hearts community. Based in Munich.

Hi, my name is Harald and I'm a passionate Python developer interested in development, DevOps and AI. I'm currently located in Austria working as a Senior Software Developer and Python Technical Leader for Anexia.

I also work on Open Source Projects and write Articles and Tutorials on my blog.

IT engineer at DAIKIN INDUSTRIES, LTD. (Japan), working across the full stack—infrastructure, frontend, and backend development. Primarily writes Python and TypeScript.
Currently building energy optimization tools that analyze HVAC system data to generate operational improvement proposals.
Works in a Scrum-based team environment and has experience contributing to open source projects.
In personal development, enjoys experimenting with Cloudflare Workers for serverless applications.

Heiner Wolf is a physicist and coder. After completing his Master’s degree in particle physics at CERN, he got a PhD in computer science and is now a passionate full stack developer (C#, TypeScript, Python). Heiner has been CTO for many years, in his own startups and those of others. Alongside all sorts of good stories, he enjoys realistic future scenarios and hard science fiction. And when triggered on physics, he’ll gladly rant about how fusion research should really be done.

Prof. Dr. Hilde Kuehne is a Professor of Multimodal Learning at the Tübingen AI Center and an affiliated professor at the MIT–IBM Watson AI Lab. Previously, she was a Professor of Computer Vision and Multimodal Learning at the University of Bonn. She received her PhD from the cv:hci lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where she was supervised by Rainer Stiefelhagen, and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at Fraunhofer FKIE and in the Computer Vision Group led by Prof. Jürgen Gall.
Her research focuses on video understanding, with a particular emphasis on learning without labels and multimodal video understanding. She has created several highly cited datasets and foundational works for analyzing large collections of untrimmed video data, including HMDB51, which was awarded both the ICCV 2021 Helmholtz Prize and the PAMI Mark Everingham Prize.

Holger Nösekabel has deep experience in data ecosystems, applied data science, and building production-grade systems with multidisciplinary teams. As CTO at TD Reply, he leads more than 20 engineers, data scientists, and visualization specialists in developing internal data products and delivering complex analytics projects for global Fortune 500 companies.

Before taking on the CTO role, Holger served as Director of Technical Consulting, supporting engineering teams and advising major brands on data-driven strategy. He is also a Certified ScrumMaster and an advocate for practical, team-focused agile practices.

Holger enjoys working at the intersection of data, product development, and real-world impact - bringing technical insights to diverse audiences and helping teams turn ideas into reliable, scalable solutions.

I am a machine learning practitioner and former founder working across predictive modeling, computer vision, MLOps, and autonomous systems. After studying mechanical engineering, I worked in the electric vehicle development sector at Hyundai Motor Group, contributing to large-scale, safety-critical automotive systems.

I later founded and scaled an agtech startup from zero to a six-figure ARR business. This experience shaped my focus on building technology that delivers measurable, real-world value rather than chasing technical hype. After exiting, I transitioned into the e-commerce domain, applying machine learning to large-scale experimentation and operational optimization.

My background includes graduate research in robotics, published work in applied machine learning, and hands-on experience deploying end-to-end ML systems. I am particularly interested in explainability-driven optimization, agent-based workflows, and cross-disciplinary system design. I believe polymath practitioners—those who can bridge domains—will be especially valuable in the era of AI.

I'm a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, conducting research in high-energy physics as a member of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. My work focuses on studying Higgs boson decays into two photons, analyzing data collected by the CMS detector, and contributing to software development for large-scale scientific analyses. I'm passionate about scientific computing and open-source tools that enable reproducible and efficient research. I’m maintainer of Awkward Array, an array library for nested, variable-sized data, using NumPy-like idioms, and an author and maintainer of Coffea, a toolkit designed to simplify data analysis in particle physics. With experience in the scientific Python ecosystem, I enjoy building tools that drive insight and accelerate scientific discovery.

I have been working with Python for over eight years, although I started programming back in school.

I began with small personal projects, then worked with several startups, gaining hands-on experience with real-world systems.

Since 2021, I have been part of the K2 Cloud development team, focusing on building and scaling production Python services in AWS-like cloud platform.

Dr. Illia Babounikau is an accomplished data scientist with extensive expertise in machine learning and forecasting. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Hamburg University and initially pursued an academic career, focusing on large-scale data analysis and machine learning applications. His contributions have been instrumental in international scientific collaborations, including the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and the COMET project at J-PARC.

For the past five years, Dr. Babounikau has been a Data Scientist at Blue Yonder and VOIDS, specializing in developing and fine-tuning advanced forecasting models for retail planning and inventory management. He leads the design and implementation of tailored machine-learning solutions, addressing complex challenges within supply chains across diverse industries.

Dr. Babounikau is passionate about bridging the gap between data science and business strategy, ensuring machine learning models are aligned with business objectives to drive data-informed decision-making.

Co-Founder, encourageventures, former Senior Vice President at SAP SE with over 20 years in the company. She serves and served on the supervisory boards of CMBlu, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Würth, Uni Rat Konstanz, and q.beyond AG. She co-founded encourageventures e.V., an investor network dedicated to backing diverse founding teams and encouraging more women to become entrepreneurs.

Ines Montani is a developer specializing in tools for AI and NLP technology. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Explosion and a core developer of spaCy, a popular open-source library for Natural Language Processing in Python, and Prodigy, a modern annotation tool for creating training data for machine learning models.

Iryna is a data scientist and co-founder of DataForce Solutions GmbH. At DataForce, the team is building LUML, an open-source, end-to-end AIOps platform that lets teams track experiments, version models, deploy, and monitor—all in one place.

Hey, Im Jakob. I have studied Data Science in my Bachelors and Masters and currently work at a fin-tech where Im involved in all kinds of projects. My main goal is creating things that are actually useful and not just full of buzz-words. Im a big fan of visualizing things and always make sure that anyone who is interested in the topics Im working on can follow the reasoning of the chosen approach.

2008
M.Sc. Physics and Computer Science at Osnabrück University

2012
PhD in Physics at Osnabrück University

2013 - now
Sensor Developer at ROSEN Group

2000 - now
Volunteer operative in the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW, Germany)

Jeyashree Krishnan is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Siemens AG. Her work focuses on building and operationalizing scalable machine learning services, with an emphasis on foundation models and time series forecasting. She is also a Visiting Researcher at the Center for Computational Life Sciences, RWTH Aachen University.

I'm a Staff Research Data Engineer in the Research Department of DeepL, working on platform-level tooling for scaling data pipelines to petabyte scale. I have been part of the initiative to adopt Rust in critical components used for model training, and I'm looking forward to sharing this experience with you.

Johannes holds a PhD in computer science, has developed open-source software, algorithms and statistic methods for genome data analysis, worked as a data scientist, and led a group of data engineers in a mid-size startup. He is currently bootstrapping SaaS infrastructure software projects with a focus on cross-organizational data sharing.

John Robert leads data and cloud projects at Sunnic Lighthouse (Enerparc AG), where he works on building and operating data-intensive workflows in production. He has over eight years of experience with Python, machine learning, and AI, and began his career working on autonomous driving systems at Daimler (Mercedes-Benz).

John has spoken at conferences across Europe, the United States, and other regions, sharing practical insights on building, deploying, and operating AI systems in real-world environments. His current focus is on AI safety and AI security, particularly how agentic and autonomous systems can be designed with clear boundaries and controls.

He is the founder of Don’t Fear AI, an initiative aimed at helping people understand how to use AI responsibly and how to build reliable AI systems without hype or unnecessary complexity. John believes in a future where humans and AI systems work together safely and effectively.

Outside of technology, John enjoys traveling and has visited nearly 50 countries.

Jon is a Machine Learning Engineer specialized in IoT systems, with a Master in Data Science and a Bachelor in Electronics Engineering. He has been contributing to open-source software since 2010.

These days Jon is Head of Data Science at Soundsensing, a provider of monitoring solutions for HVAC systems in commercial buildings. He is also the maintainer of emlearn, an open-source Machine Learning library for microcontrollers.

Data Engineer at inovex since 2022, full-time software engineer since 2018, coder for as long as I can remember. With my experience working on data warehouses and machine learning applications from small-scale tests up to international deployments, I enjoy eliminating bugs and bottlenecks, getting cool systems online and writing beautiful code. Still proud of the time when a colleague complained that deploying to production has become too easy and is no longer a thrilling adventure because of me.

Hi, I'm Jonas Dedden, Staff Research Data Engineer at DeepL SE, Germany. Johanna Goergen and I work at the Research Data Platform team of DeepL Research, where we are responsible for the on-prem & cloud-based k8s compute infrastructure for petabyte scale data processing pipelines. We provide the platform that our Research Data Engineers can use to collect & preprocess all data needed for training the DeepL foundational language models that power our production services.

Joshua is a Data Engineer at inovex GmbH dedicated to building robust, scalable data products. Utilizing his foundation as a Full Stack Software Engineer, he applies rigorous software engineering principles to ensure every data solution is high-quality, maintainable, and efficient.

Platform Engineer by Day ⚙️
Product Engineer by Night 🌙
Ex-Data Scientist 📊
Online Tutor 📺
Husband to a gorgeous Wife 💍
Father of 1002 kids 🐣

Managing Partner, Futury Capital CFA with 12 years of experience in debt and equity. Previously at PwC and IKB Deutsche Industriebank. At Futury Capital she manages venture capital funds investing in technology-driven startups across Germany and Europe.

Justine is a Senior Projects and Consulting Specialist at GAMS Software GmbH, where she bridges the gap between complex mathematics and practical software solutions. With a PhD in Operations Research and six years of experience in academic research and teaching, she now focuses on the end-to-end delivery of real-world optimization projects. For the past three years, Justine has been helping clients design, build, and deploy robust decision-making systems. She is passionate about showing developers how to move beyond basic heuristics and leverage true mathematical optimization to solve their most complex challenges.

Kat is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Malt, the freelancer marketplace, where she works in the relevancy and matching team. She has a background in bioinformatics and passionate about beautiful code.

I am a Senior Developer at SAP in Berlin. I've spent the last 8 years of my career at SAP starting with SAP's ML Foundation, DataHub, Data Intelligence and now working for AI Core. I specialise in scalable, cloud-native microservices and AI orchestration platforms. My current work focuses on developing SAP's high-availability distributed AI platform. I hold a Masters in Computer Science from IIT Guwahati, with a specialised research focus on NLP. I am also a Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and a Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS). I love to teach and in my free time love playing the guitar or working on hobby electronics projects.

Kyle is a Software Developer at Meta focused on developer tooling and static analysis. For the past four years he has worked to improve Python language services. Kyle is passionate about building tools that make developers' lives easier, especially in dynamic languages like Python.

I'm Squad Lead for Automation & Analytics, coordinating Process Automation projects and drafting solutions for intelligent enterprises. Within projects, I work as a Senior Data Scientist and Cloud Solution Architect, combining various BTP services with Artificial Intelligence.
If you like to chat about Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, bots gone rogue and seeking for world domination, or Roundnet you're more than welcome to contact me!

Laura is a very technical designer™️, working at Pydantic as Lead Design Engineer. Her side projects include Sweet Summer Child Score (summerchild.dev) and Ethics Litmus Tests (ethical-litmus.site). Laura is passionate about feminism, digital rights and designing for privacy. She speaks, writes and runs workshops at the intersection of design and technology.

I'm a freelance web developer helping small teams ship reliable software. I've been working with Python for 10+ years and enjoy automating work for other developers.

These days I'm very interested in local-first software technologies.
I attended the Recurse Center (a programming retreat) in 2018.

GitHub profile
Blog

Leon Lukas has been the team lead of the AI Competence Center for two years and has played a key role in the development and implementation of AI solutions within the city administration. While he initially trained models and built systems himself, he is now responsible for the architecture and projects at it@m, the city’s IT service provider. For more information on AI in the City of Munich, visit: ki.muenchen.de.

I'm a Data Scientist who enjoys turning complex systems into practical, intuitive solutions. After earning my PhD in Mathematics I’ve spent my career turning complex scientific ideas into practical computational tools. My work ranges from exploring the frontiers of GenAI to building semantic data layers, and I spend much of my time developing scientific software and digital twins for real‑world processes. I love creating tools that make sophisticated models understandable and usable, bridging the gap between deep technical detail and everyday application.

I started my career as a data scientist in the oil and gas industry, where I worked on building services to deploy machine learning models in a production environment. Currently, I work as a software engineer at Rosenxt on a cloud backend team building a multi-tenant data management system. I am passionate about the combination of data science and software engineering and continuing to grow in both fields.

I am a Software Engineer working at Anaconda. I have been working on the conda project for more than 3 years. My hobbies are crocheting, writing and cooking.

Senior Applied Scientist in Wolt's Personalization Team working on Venue and Item Ranking and Recommendation. Show Host of Recsperts - Recommender Systems Experts, the Podcast Show with industry and academia experts in Recommender Systems. Building Recommenders and Personalization Solutions with Python for various industries since 9+ years as well as creator and instructor of Python RecSys Training.

Junior Software Developer
Bachelor of Science in Media Informatics (Medieninformatik B. Sc.)
Graduated from Berliner Hochschule für Technik in 2025
Passionate about Python and programming in general, coding challenges and tutoring/education

Markus Klein is a Founding Engineer at Supermetal. He maintains open-source projects including the odbc2parquet command-line tool and the arrow-odbc Python wheels. Throughout his career, in both management and individual contributor roles, he has advocated for Continuous Delivery, Test-Driven Development, and Mob Programming. Sometimes successfully. He still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.

Martin Seeler supercharges global supply chains with GenAI as Sr Staff AI Engineer at Blue Yonder. He ships AI that survives angry customers, skeptical executives, and Black Friday traffic. Speaks globally about the messy reality of production AI. Measures success in customer value delivered.

I started my career in data 10+ years ago as a data engineer, working in large corporates like AXA setting up on-prem Spark clusters (yes, that old!) to tech unicorns building data platforms in the cloud at Klarna, Back Market, and Trade Republic.

Over the years, I found a passion for sharing what I learned and teaching others. It became my full-time job when I joined as the first DevRel at MotherDuck (DuckDB in the cloud) in 2023.

I believe learning should be fun. I enjoy making complex topics more approachable through storytelling and creativity.

I want to keep teaching curious students (in-person and online) and help the next generation learn not just data, but software engineering in this post-AI world.

Milan is a freelance developer specializing in numerical simulation and scientific computing tools. Based in Braunschweig with a master's degree in EE from TU Braunschweig, he builds open-source frameworks that bridge engineering practice and Python scientific computing.

As the creator of PathSim, Milan has worked on a range of projects including modeling for biomedical sensors, design automation for integrated circuits, microwave imaging, and most recently nuclear fusion systems. Beyond PathSim, he maintains several scientific computing tools including vectorfitting algorithms, harmonic balance frameworks, and RFIC design tools.

Principal Software Engineer at ReversingLabs, working on large-scale distributed systems and data-intensive architectures.

I design and operate high-throughput, real-time pipelines, with an emphasis on reliability, observability, and performance in real-world conditions, and a practical approach to engineering trade-offs and system failures.

Mohamed Amine Jebari is a Lead Data Scientist based in Berlin, specializing in large-scale machine learning systems, Marketing Mix Modeling, and applied NLP. With extensive hands-on experience in Python and the scientific ecosystem, including pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyMC, transformers, and Hugging Face. Amine builds end-to-end solutions that bridge rigorous statistical modeling with modern LLM-driven workflows.

Working at a data-driven consultancy, he leads a team of data scientists while remaining deeply involved in technical development, from Bayesian modeling to production-grade pipelines on AWS. Their work often focuses on solving real-world business problems with interpretable, high-impact models.
Curious to uncover the truth and being a big fan of puzzles, he is now heavily working on causal inference and marketing mix models, pulling one inch at a time, closer the the truth.

DevOps Engineer and Dynatrace Consultant at Par-Tec S.p.A.
I am Passionate about technology, innovation, and continuous learning. I like to automate things and I Love Python and K8s.
Beyond the technical world, I am an avid traveller and explorer, always seeking new perspectives and inspiration from around the globe.

Moritz Bauer is a Senior Data Scientist at Blue Yonder, where he currently develops software for demand forecasting. In a previous career, he obtained a Ph.D. in high-energy particle physics and contributed research to the Belle II flavor physics experiment at KEK.

While demand forecasting works very well without language models, he can't escape the fascination of modern AI and is always looking for excuses to spend some time in this domain.

With a background as mechanical engineer and a PhD in material science, I describe myself as a mechanical engineer who can program and not as a software engineer. Started programming in Python, Perl, PHP and C++ as a pupil for fun in the end of the 90ths, I lost track of programming for some years during mechanical studies just to rediscover Python several years ago as a perfect tool for engineers to solve real-world problems in industrial production. The huge eco-system of Python and the intuitive syntax open new opportunities to me to combine domain knowledge in industrial processes with digitalization solution approaches. I enjoy sharing this with all people interested in improving industrial production in context of digitalization.

As the Global Head of Platform Products Portfolio, Nicolas leads high performing teams that design, implement and maintain Merck's global data, analytics and AI ecosystem UPTIMIZE.

Cloud-Engineer at inovex helping to develop and provide a private cloud infrastructure with a focus on performance and optimization.

Nils is Lead Data Scientist at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, where he builds and productionizes machine learning solutions in Python. He earned his PhD in Physics from Universität Augsburg and has his background in R&D and material development. This path allows him to bridge domain-heavy lab and engineering problems with modern ML tooling, turning complex industrial data into robust, deployable systems.

I am a Data Scientist primarily focused on Deep Learning and MLOps. In my spare time I contribute to several open-source python libraries.

For the past 4 years, I have been working on machine learning and data engineering and QuantCo. Previously, I studied computer science at the Technical University of Munich, focusing on machine and deep learning.

An experienced QA engineer and software developer with a strong focus on Python-based testing and test automation. Specialized in breaking applications through exploratory, risk-driven, and destructive testing approaches. With several years of experience working on complex software systems, the focus is on uncovering hidden failure modes, improving test strategies, and helping teams build more resilient applications. Passionate about bridging the gap between QA and development by sharing practical insights into how and why software fails in real-world scenarios.

I was born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine.

In 2000, I received a BSc in Computer Science from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

I started my career in game dev in Kyiv in the early 2000s, and continued it in Canada, moving to Vancouver in 2008 to render zombies at Capcom.

Later, I worked on VR at AMD, content pipelines at Toonbox, Houdini Engine at SideFX, the Maya viewport at Autodesk and Redshift RT at Maxon.

Currently, I'm Principal Software Developer at Autodesk, working on material and shading workflows in MaterialX and Hydra applications.

Currently solving the MLOps puzzle at Zalando, ensuring our pricing recommendation algorithms are as streamlined as my swimming technique. I spend my days shaping ML standards at scale and my free time training in the real world.

My life in two modes:

1. Running pipelines & Diving deep into infrastructure.

2. Running trails & Diving into the ocean.

Always looking to optimize the former to make more time for the latter."

Rahkakavee Baskaran is the Data Lead at &effect. As a developer, she works in field of Natural Language Processing and Generative AI with experience in software and infrastructure development. Her work focuses on leveraging data science and software development to create social impact, particularly in projects related to social sciences and the public sector.

I'm a Research Software Engineer helping social scientists to have their work reproducible. I'm a former The Carpentries instructor and content creator.

Dr. Raphael Hviding is Astronomer working at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy. He is a member of the Data Science and Galaxies & Cosmology Departments. He works on problems related to complex data analysis from the world's frontier observatories as well as the applications of data science to solving astronomical mysteries. Originally from the USA, he obtained his PhD from Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona working on insights Dust-Obscured Supermassive Black Holes from large Astronomical Surveys.
He now lives in Heidelberg with his wife and three cats, enjoys cycling, bouldering, and building computers.

Rashmi is a AI Research Scientist at Poseidon and a researcher at MIT CSAIL, working in the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. She has six years of industrial experience, having brought ideas to life at pre-seed startups and contributed to impactful redesigns and features at established industry giants. Beyond coding, Rashmi finds inspiration in capturing the wonders of the cosmos through her telescope and engaging in board games with friends.

I am a master’s degree student at the University of Namibia, currently studying towards a master’s degree in Educational Technology. Additionally, I hold a certificate in Big Data Technologies from the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST). I am passionate about teaching, learning, and software development.

Rostislaw, a data architect at RATIONAL AG, specializes in distributed databases, the Apache Hadoop ecosystem and Azure cloud. He leverages his expertise to maintain the enterprise Data & Analytics platform for IoT data, where his daily work involves reconciling diverse stakeholder perspectives to deliver sustainable solutions.

As a Data Scientist on the Traveler Data Products team at GetYourGuide, I have spent the last 4 years developing and refining the ranking and relevance systems that power one of the world's leading travel experience platforms. My work is focused on enhancing the traveler's journey, helping millions discover and book their ideal experiences through data-driven solutions.

My path to data science is built on a foundation of diverse technical experience. I began my career in 2013 as a backend developer in Pune, India, before pursuing a Master's in Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Technology Patna, where I specialised in Network Science. Following my studies, I continued at the institute for two years as a research assistant, further honing my expertise in Network Science, which paved my way into the field of data science.

In 2021, I relocated to Berlin to join GetYourGuide, where I apply my software engineering background and machine learning skills to solve real-world problems at scale. This blend of backend development experience, academic research, and industry application gives me a unique perspective on building robust, production-ready data solutions.

Samuel Oslovich is a PhD candidate in the group of Stephanie Wehner at QuTech, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. His research focuses on benchmarking, scheduling, and improving the performance of near-term quantum networks, using Python-based simulation tools such as NetQASM, SquidASM, and Qoala-Sim. He holds a Master's in Computer Science and a Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Connecticut, USA.

CEO & Co-Founder, Genow.ai Former postdoctoral researcher at TU Darmstadt. Forbes 30 Under 30 (2025). Co-founded Genow.ai, an AI platform that consolidates fragmented enterprise knowledge. Raised a 1.65M Euro seed round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF).

Sarah Masud is currently a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, exploring stereotypes and narratives. During her PhD from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, New Delhi, she explored the role of different context cues in improving computational hate speech-related tasks

My name is Sebastian and I work as an AI Test Engineer at Validaitor. With a background in Mechatronics and Autonomous Systems, and hands-on experience at Bosch, Fraunhofer, and in international research settings, I focus on the intersection of AI trustworthiness and real-world deployment. My current work involves developing methods to test AI models for vulnerabilities, safety risks, and secure behavior - ensuring AI systems perform reliably and ethically. I like to share my experience with other techies all around the world. When I don't look into a screen, I like bouldering and books. :)

Data scientist forever; Worked everywhere in Blue Yonder, messed with data science, built platforms, now exploring GenAI & AI agents. Known to always ask the question nobody else dared.

Sebastian is an LLM Research Engineer with over a decade of experience in artificial intelligence. His work bridges academia and industry, including roles as a senior engineer at Lightning AI and a statistics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

He is also the author of Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch).

His expertise lies in LLM research and the development of high-performance AI systems, with a strong focus on practical, code-driven implementations.

Serhii Sokolenko is a co-founder of Tower, a Pythonic platform for data flows and agents running on top of open analytical storage. Prior to founding Tower, Serhii worked at Databricks, Snowflake and Google on data processing and databases.

Shiva Banasaz Nouri is a Senior Data Scientist based in Berlin, Germany, working on applied machine learning with a focus on Python, NLP, computer vision, and generative AI. She builds production-grade AI systems across healthcare, legal, and enterprise domains using open-source technologies.

She is the Berlin Chapter Lead of Women in AI, where she actively fosters community building, knowledge sharing, and inclusive participation in the AI and Python ecosystems.

Shlomi Hod is a researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute. His work focuses on creating tools for the real-world deployment of responsible computing systems, with particular emphasis on differential privacy. He has led workshops on operationalizing Responsible AI for policymakers, regulators, and diplomats across organizations worldwide, including the US Congress and the German Federal Foreign Office. Shlomi recently earned his Computer Science PhD from Boston University and completed an OpenDP fellowship at Harvard University and a one-year research visit at Columbia University during his doctoral studies.

Dr. Silke Horn is a Mathematical Optimization QA Engineer with the Gurobi Optimizer team. She began her journey at Gurobi in 2018 in the technical support team and transitioned to R&D in 2024. She holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from TU Darmstadt (Germany) and has many years of experience in academic teaching and software development.

Simon Hedrich is a computer scientist and AI enthusiast currently completing his Master’s degree in Computer Science. His academic and professional journey is marked by a deep interest in bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical AI engineering.

Through his work at inovex GmbH, Simon has demonstrated expertise in specialized areas of Artificial Intelligence, including computer vision and the use of synthetic data to enhance small object detection. His technical writing highlights his ability to leverage generative AI models, such as Stable Diffusion, to solve complex real-world challenges like training data scarcity.

Dr.-Ing. Simonas Černiauskas is the founder and CTO of tisix.io, specializing in developing practical LLM solutions for media and publishers. With a doctorate from RWTH Aachen and experience as a principal researcher at Research Center Jülich, he combines deep technical expertise with hands-on implementation experience. His work focuses on multi-modal content generation and media processing. Drawing from his background in mechanical engineering, quality assurance and machine learning engineering, Simonas develops scalable AI solutions while maintaining a strong focus on quality assurance and risk management. He regularly shares insights through speaking engagements and technical publications, helping organizations navigate the complexities of AI implementation with practical, business-focused approaches.

Senior Applied Scientist at Zalando, working on developing large scale forecasting systems. Stefan holds a PhD in Mathematics from Ruhr University Bochum where his research focused on "Analyzing dynamic dependencies in time series. Prior to his 3 years at Zalando he worked for 5 years at E.ON as a Data Scientist creating algorithms for smart meter analytics and forecasting.

Stefan is a data engineer and works at Covestro in a newly established data office. He has four years of experience working on a variety of data platforms, ranging from classic ETL pipelines and data warehousing to near–real-time stream processing. Before moving into data engineering, he completed a PhD in physics, where he felt in love with Python and working with data. Since then he is always curious to learn new things and share what he has learned with others.

Data Engineer / ML Engineer at inovex GmbH.
I’m passionate about building innovative and impactful digital solutions and sharing practical insights that create sustainable value for customers and teams.

Stefanie Molin is a software engineer at Bloomberg in New York City, where she tackles tough problems in information security, particularly those revolving around data wrangling/visualization, building tools for gathering data, and knowledge sharing. She is also a core developer of numpydoc and the author of “Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas: A Python data science handbook for data collection, wrangling, analysis, and visualization,” which is currently in its second edition and has been translated into Korean and Chinese. She holds a bachelor’s of science degree in operations research from Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, as well as a master’s degree in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning, from Georgia Tech. In her free time, she enjoys traveling the world, inventing new recipes, and learning new languages spoken among both people and computers.

Psychologist turned full-stack polyglot Data Scientist with an established career in data analytics, scientific psychology, and project leadership. Driven by values of care, compassion and privacy.

I am a GenAI researcher at Fraunhofer Institute, Germany. Born in India, I decided to move to Germany in search of new challenges. My professional journey has been shaped by a passion to solve problems in various domains. Academically, I have graduated with a Master's degree from the department of electrical and computer science. My focus has always been around statistics. I have been able to work on projects related to artificial intelligence and deep learning, especially in the field of signal processing and imaging. With my experience, I want to guide the growth of next generation of ML researcher. When I am not working, you will find me exploring Europe.

Sylvain Corlay is the founder and CEO of QuantStack.

As an open-source developer, Sylvain is active in the scientific computing ecosystem, particularly within the Jupyter project, as well as the conda-forge and xtensor projects. In 2018, he and the other Jupyter leadership members were awarded the ACM Software System Award.

Beyond QuantStack, Sylvain is involved in the community. He served as a board member of the NumFOCUS Foundation from 2018 to 2024, as the vice-chair of JupyterCon 2020, and General Chair of JupyterCon 2023 in Paris. He has coordinated the PyData Paris community since 2017, both as the organizer of the meetup group and as co-organizer of the annual conference in 2024 and 2025.

Tamara Badikyan is a Data Analyst currently working at the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) in Berlin. Since June 2025, she has been creating accessible tech tutorials for deaf and hard-of-hearing learners. She runs a YouTube channel focused on making Excel content accessible through manual subtitles and simple language.
Tamara holds master's degrees in Migration and Intercultural Relations (Erasmus Mundus Program, University of Oldenburg) and Sociology and Social Anthropology (Central European University, Budapest). She completed the W3C "Introduction to Web Accessibility" course and will be conducting a guest lecture on accessible learning materials at MSB Medical School Berlin in January 2026.
As a non-native German speaker who is also learning German Sign Language, Tamara understands language barriers and accessibility challenges firsthand.

IT engineer at DAIKIN INDUSTRIES, LTD. (Japan), working across the full stack—infrastructure, frontend, and backend development. Primarily writes Python and TypeScript.
Currently building energy optimization tools that analyze HVAC system data to generate operational improvement proposals.
Works in a Scrum-based team environment and has experience contributing to open source projects.

Tereza Iofciu is a data and AI expert, leadership coach, and PSF Fellow with 15+ years of experience leading data and product teams at neuefische, FREE NOW, and New Work (XING). She helps professionals lead and adapt in the age of AI through her Data Diplomat Framework™, bridging technical depth with human leadership.

Theodore Meynard is a data science manager at GetYourGuide.He leads the evolution of their ranking algorithm, helping customers to find the best activities to book and locations to explore. Beyond work, he is one of the co-organizers of the Pydata Berlin meetup and the conference. When he is not programming, he loves riding his bike and looking for the best bakery-patisserie in town.

Thomas builds LLM applications that create business impact. He co-founded neunzehn innovations GmbH to bring generative AI into companies that need it.

Before that, he ran startup support in Heidelberg—designing accelerators, connecting founders with money and know-how, and launching events like Neurons & Neckar, Sensors & Data Hackathon, and Startup Weekend Rhein-Neckar. Earlier: marketing and business development in electrical engineering and diagnostics.

He studied at Mannheim, got his doctorate at Basel, teaches at both Heidelberg and Mannheim, and talks about AI when someone asks him to.

Tim Kreitner is a Senior Software Engineer at Vattenfall Energy Trading GmbH in Hamburg, Germany. With a background in Mechanical and Computational Engineering, Tim transitioned into the field of finance, leveraging various programming languages.

At Vattenfall, Tim develops Algorithmic Trading Infrastructure applications. Including Order Routers, Market Data Servers, Exchange connections.

Tobias Senst is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at idealo internet GmbH. Tobias Senst received his PhD in 2019 from the Technische Universität Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Sikora. He has more than 10 years of experience in Computer Vision and Video Analytics research.

At idealo, he switched from the world of images and videos to Natural Language Processing and is responsible for the operation and development of machine learning models in a productive environment.

I am a research assistant at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich within Prof. Schwemmer’s Computational Social Science Lab. My research area is the intersection of Machine Learning and Social Media, particularly on multi-modal understanding. In previous jobs, I have worked as a software engineer in different corporations (Amazon, Allianz, BMW) and Startups. The projects ranged from optimization algorithms to backend-engineering.

Wearer of many hats, but some of my favorite are Python enthusiast, social science researcher and amateur musician. Currently based in Berlin, Germany where I work as a senior software engineer and am an active participant in the conda open source community. I'm also an organizer of the Python Users Berlin group. Feel free to reach out via LinkedIn!

I'm a Data Scientist based in Munich who believes AI should be understood, not feared. After earning my Master's at LMU Munich, I've spent the past five years turning complex ML challenges—from computer vision to agentic systems—into working solutions. But what really excites me is making AI click for others: whether through hands-on workshops or building interactive experiences that turn abstract concepts into "aha!" moments. When I'm not wrangling models, you'll find me exploring ways to gamify learning and bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI and everyday understanding

I work as a software consultant at TNG Technology Consulting. Previously, I completed a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) in Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in the area of software engineering where I taught a course on advanced Python programming.

Valerio Maggio has been wandering around the Python community for thirteen years. He started as a volunteer, somehow ended up organising conferences like PyCon Italy, PyData, EuroPython, and EuroSciPy, and has given more talks than he can remember. He's a researcher and open-source contributor who cares about open science and good software practices. Also an unapologetic nerd—the kind who plays D&D and still believes Magic: The Gathering was better when cards had proper frames and the stack was a new thing (if you're a player too, you know what I mean). He drinks unreasonable amounts of tea and coffee.

A results-driven data professional, focused on hype-free solutions tailored to business needs.

I currently create value at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, where I develop machine learning models in the Space Weather domain. My work is complemented by finding the hidden stories in data and make them accessible to stakeholders. I studied Physics in Italy (Napoli) and Germany (Frankfurt am Main), previously worked in Analytics within the strategic division of the world's largest professional services network, as well as in the Data Science department of Italy’s leading publishing group.

I am also an organiser of PyData Roma Capitale, actively involved in building the local Python and data science community. Outside of work, I enjoy theatre, discussing finance, and learning new languages.

Experienced software architect and risk management expert with a focus on AI-ready, modular platform design. Over 25 years in developing and integrating financial systems, orchestrating complex workflows, and enabling rapid AI deployment while maintaining governance and stability.

Head of Data & Cloud, focused on inclusive career development, internal data science community, and creating diverse, high-performing data organization.

Over the past three decades, from Paris to Los Angeles, via Cambridge, UK, and New York, and back again, he has leveraged software to unlock business potential across a wide range of fields: financial markets through real-time trading platforms; cartoon animation through centralized asset management tools; yield management through behavioral analytics and social networks; digital art in new media; mobile app discovery through recommendation engines; mobile app monetization through innovative ad formats; and applied AI to deploy state-of-the-art voice recognition on the edge.

More recently, over the past three years, he developed Scaleway, a below-the-radar cloud company, into a credible regional alternative to the three major hyperscalers. During that time, he grew the team threefold to 600 employees while leading complex change management.

He is now the co-founding Executive President and Chairman of Probabl, the scikit-learn company on a mission.

As an entrepreneur, he has founded, co-founded, or joined a number of startups, developing products that have reached hundreds of millions of end users globally, often through elegant user interface design and innovative user experiences. As a key shareholder, he has also contributed to the growth and exit of several companies.

As an advisor, board member, and angel investor, he now tracks the progress of many more forward-looking ventures.

In Paris, he is a strong advocate for the tech ecosystem: a co-founding member of France Digitale and HUB AI Paris, as well as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD Business School.

Yannik is a software engineer at QuantCo, working on client-facing projects and on internal developer tooling and infrastructure. He studied Computer Science at KIT and contributes to the conda-forge ecosystem.

Hi, I'm Étienne! I am responsible for developing machine learning solutions to rider problems, and turning them into features that help Transit users in their journeys. Before working at Transit, I was building databases and analysis tools for the aerospace industry. I was also been involved in the mobility professorship at Polytechnique Montréal. I hold a B. Eng. in Aerospace from Polytechnique Montréal.