Advancing Research in AI and Machine Learning

Meet three international junior researchers from the MCML who will give you an insight into their work: Jesse Grootjen, Azade Farshad and Gabriel Marques Tavares. All three have moved to Munich to pursue exciting opportunities in their academic careers.

After completing his Masters in AI at Utrecht University, Jesse Grootjen moved to Munich to start his PhD with the Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media Group at LMU where he is trying to understand vision loss with the help of machine learning. "People often combat vision loss with compensation mechanisms, like squinting the eyes to be able to see from a distance," he explains. 

Due to this compensation, some people can live with vision loss for months, sometimes even years. This is also the case for severe visual impairments like cataracts (cloudy areas in the lens of your eye), age-related macular degeneration (loss of central vision) or glaucoma (loss of peripheral vision). However, waiting for treatment can have negative consequences, for example permanent damage to the vision. This is where Grootjen's research comes into play: "I conduct research on how these compensation strategies look in terms of eye movements, and how we can use machine learning as a means for early detection, so that people affected by these visual impairments can get treatment earlier and we can preserve as much of their vision as possible."

For Dr. Azade Farshad, originally from Iran, the academic journey began with a bachelor's degree in her home country. Her desire for a top-tier education in informatics led her to TUM. During her master’s studies, she discovered the international and dynamic research culture in Munich.

As one of the first PhD candidates supported by the MCML, Farshad conducts research in semantic scene modeling with limited data and supervision, applied to computer vision and healthcare. Her research is especially valuable in medical imaging and surgical applications, where predicting the outcomes of specific actions or parameters is crucial for planning. After successfully completing her PhD in 2023, she stayed in Munich and continued as a postdoc at the Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures and Augmented Reality. Her long-term vision is to continue in academia: "I believe that the academic environment is particularly suited to high impact research in healthcare, especially when addressing challenges like patient privacy and data security."

Dr. Gabriel Marques Tavares is originally from Arapongas, a small town in the south of Brazil. Before coming to Munich, he pursued his PhD at the Università degli Studi di Milano in Italy. "Choosing a career path after the PhD is a challenging task since one needs to go very deeply into a particular topic and once the diploma is awarded, there are two options: shaping a profile for industry or continuing in academia. Although industry offers interesting positions and projects, my love for research has always been stronger," he explains and therefore decided to start his postdoc the Chair of Database Systems and Data Mining at LMU.

Marques Tavares has been doing research in the field of process mining, which investigates the execution of business processes within organizations, aiming at improving their performances, saving resources and identifying bottlenecks. Besides his research, he continues to explore Munich, its districts, and its cultural and historical attractions: "The city provides everything one can imagine," he says.