Team 2026
An international group of PhD candidates, senior academics, early-career researchers, and students, volunteering their time to bring WiDS to Munich.
Lisa Bondo Andersen
Lisa is a PhD candidate at the Social Data Science and AI (SODA) Lab at LMU Munich. Her work focuses on understanding users based on data that can be passively collected while they are interacting with a product, such as eye gaze, facial expressions and other sensor data.
She holds a Master's and Bachelor's degree in Engineering Psychology from Aalborg University, Denmark. The field centers on researching and evaluating user experiences of products in various forms, through internships and project collaborations with companies such as LEGO and Jabra. Her skills span both qualitative and quantitative methods, with a particular focus on quantifying data outputs to simplify researcher workflows and streamline data collection processes.
Prof. Dr. Frauke Kreuter
Frauke holds the Chair of Social Data Science and AI Lab at LMU Munich, Germany and at the University of Maryland, USA, where she is Co-director of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa) and faculty member in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM).
She is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, and received the Warren Mitofsky Innovators Award of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in 2020. In addition to her academic work, Professor Kreuter is the Founder of the International Program for Survey and Data Science (IPSDS); Co-Founder of the Coleridge Initiative, whose goal is to accelerate data-driven research and policy around human beings and their interactions for program management, policy development, and scholarly purposes by enabling efficient, effective, and secure access to sensitive data about society and the economy; and Co-Founder of the German-language podcast Dig Deep (www.digdeep.de).
Theerdha Sara Reji
Theerdha is a student assistant at the Social Data Science and AI Lab and a Master's student of Statistics and Data Science at LMU. Her previous academic and professional experience spans Development and Economic Policy.
Before her Master's degree in Munich, she worked as a public finance consultant to multiple State Governments in India while using data-based techniques for policy recommendations. She holds a Bachelor's and a first Master's degree in Economics, focused on impact measurement of employment initiatives on migration and informal labor. Her interest lies in the intersection of identity economics and data science.
Lisa Schmierer
Lisa is a computer scientist with a background in innovation and journalism. After receiving her Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, she pursued a Master's degree in Computer Science.
Alongside her studies, she completed an honours degree in Innovation and Technology Management at the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) in Munich, and has worked as a journalist for SWR, among others. In Fall 2025, she joined the Social Data Science and AI Lab under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Frauke Kreuter. In her research she combines methods from math and physics with the social sciences to model social behaviour such as collective action and the mechanisms of societal change.
Helena Džakula
Helena is Strategic Marketing Coordinator at SOS Children's Villages e.V., where she combines data-driven analysis with creative campaign development to strengthen the organization's impact.
She previously worked for Save the Children Germany and the ONE Campaign in policy and campaigns, organizing advocacy initiatives on food security, preventable diseases, gender equality, and human rights in global supply chains. Her academic and research background includes positions as a research assistant at SODA and on the DISELMA project, which explored the role of digital media for people living with chronic diseases. Helena holds degrees in Communication Science and in Statistics & Data Science from LMU Munich, as well as a degree in Media Science with a specialization in politics.
Dr. Isabella Almstätter
Isabella is public outreach manager at MDSI. After studying Biotechnology and Molecular Biotechnology at TUM, she received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Biology from LMU.
In 2024 she re-joined TUM after several years as public relations manager for a cluster of excellence at TUM/LMU/UA and in companies.
Iulia Pasov
Iulia Pasov is an Engineering Manager for Data Science at SIXT SE. With a background in software engineering and more than 10 years of experience working with AI solutions, she focuses on building data-driven services to optimise car rental processes.
Iulia relies on her experience to empower others to reach successful data science or software engineering careers. She is also pursuing a PhD with LMU & Politehnica University of Bucharest.
Johanna Sommer
Johanna is a Machine Learning Research Engineer at Pruna AI and a PhD student at TUM supervised by Stephan Günnemann (Data Analytics and Machine Learning Group).
Before joining TUM for a Master's degree in computer science, she obtained her Bachelor's degree through a dual study program with IBM, including research internships in San Francisco and Zurich. Johanna holds the MDSI / Linde PhD fellowship for her PhD research and now works on making AI accessible and sustainable by optimizing ML models for efficient inference.
Beyza Çandir
Beyza works at the intersection of machine learning and computational biology. She holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Sabancı University, where she also worked as a Visiting Researcher at TastanLab.
Her research centers on drug synergy prediction and model interpretability, with a particular focus on examining shortcut learning in molecular models. After completing her degree, Beyza recently moved to Munich to look for her next steps in AI-driven bioinformatics. Having previously been involved with WiDS Istanbul, she is now glad to be a team member for WiDS Munich.
Shan Huang
Shan is a Program Manager at the Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI). She has been working at TUM for over four years, focusing on program and event management.
She holds a Master's degree in Intercultural German Studies from the University of Göttingen, where she taught German as a foreign language to refugees and helped them integrate into German society. With her background in linguistics, translation, and cultural studies, she has also worked as an interpreter at multiple international conferences on various topics.
Dr. Anna-Carolina Haensch
Caro holds a PhD in Survey Statistics from the University of Mannheim and over ten years of experience in statistical data analysis. She is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Maryland, teaching statistics and method courses for the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM).
Caro is also a Researcher ("Akademische Rätin") at LMU, where she leads the Introduction to Statistics lecture and contributes to various projects at SODA. Her research interests span survey methodology, synthetic data, and large language models, and their implications for society.
Dr. Wiebke Weber
Wiebke is the Scientific Manager at the Social Data Science and AI Lab (SODA) at LMU Munich, and Research Fellow at the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
Her research focuses mainly on measurement quality and comparability of survey items. As a survey consultant, she advises on questionnaire design and survey data analyses, with correction for measurement error. Wiebke received her PhD from UPF in 2013 in political science and survey methodology; her dissertation dealt with measurement equivalence and the meaning of left-right orientation using data from the ESS.