Raúl Carballo-Rubio is a Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucía, a center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the largest and most prestigious public research institution in Spain. His research focuses on black hole physics in and beyond general relativity, with particular emphasis on low-energy effective and semiclassical descriptions, and has been featured in well-known media outlets such as Scientific American and Sky & Telescope. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers (two of them as single author and published in Physical Review Letters and Nature Communications), 1 book chapter and 6 conference proceedings, with a total h-index of 32, and has officially participated in the supervision of 3 PhD theses and 4 Master theses. He also contributes actively to the international community as co-organizer of events of diverse nature, from summer schools to large international conferences.

Tassilo Christ is a partner at d-fine. He started his professional career as a financial engineer implementing mathematical methods and IT solutions for the pricing of financial derivatives. Having experience in data analysis and machine learning from his time in academia, he is now heading d-fine’s Industrial Solutions group. His team is focusing on data driven challenges in the manufacturing sector with a particular focus on robotic AI, factory automation and industrial data platforms.  

Dr Christ studied physics at the University of Würzburg and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and holds a PhD in physics from Technical University of Munich. 

Sascha Cassandra Diefenbacher is a researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Heidelberg University, where she leads a research group on generative AI for LHC physics. Her work lies at the intersection of machine learning and high-energy physics, with a particular focus on generative models, surrogate simulations, and data-driven methods for particle-physics analyses.

She received her PhD from the University of Hamburg working on generative modeling of particle-physics data. Her research has covered fast calorimeter simulation, generative amplification of simulated event samples, machine-learning-based unfolding, anomaly detection in experimental data, and applications of modern generative models to detector and analysis workflows.

HANS JENSEN LECTURER: Shep Doeleman is Founding Director of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project and led the international team that made the first image of a black hole. He received his bachelor’s from Reed College, a PhD in astrophysics from MIT, and spent a year in Antarctica conducting space-science experiments where he got hooked on doing research in challenging circumstances. After serving as assistant director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory and receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, he moved to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-founded the Black Hole Initiative – the first center dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of black holes. He is the recipient of the Lancelot M. Berkeley Prize and the Bruno Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the Prix Georges Lemaître, and he now leads the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) project with a goal to make movies of black holes.

Stefan Floerchinger studied physics at Heidelberg University and University of Cambridge, before writing his PhD thesis on applications of quantum field theory to strongly interacting ultra-cold quantum gases. Afterwards his focus moved to QCD, fluid dynamics and high-energy nuclear collisions, and he spent five years as postdoc and fellow in the Theory Department at CERN. Later he came to Heidelberg for six years, to do the Habilitation, and as a member of IsoQuant and STRUCTURES. Since 2022 he is professor for Quantum Field Theory at Jena University.

Francesca Giacoppo is a staff scientist at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. Her research focuses on the atomic and nuclear structure of the heaviest nuclei that can be bred in nuclear reactors or produced in nuclear reactions. In particular, she applies low-energy methods from atomic physics such as Penning trap mass spectrometry to precision measurements of nuclear properties of the heaviest nuclides.  Her research interest also comprises nuclear spectroscopy of heavy and superheavy nuclei. She leads the scientific program carried out at the SHIPTRAP mass spectrometer installed at GSI behind the SHIP separator.

Dr. Giacoppo studied physics at the University of Catania and received a PhD in nuclear physics at the University of Messina, in Italy. Before to join GSI, she worked as researcher in Switzerland and Norway.

Arnd Hübsch is Partner at d-fine with a focus on Asset Liability Management within the overall bank control. Dr Hübsch' client work at financial institutions of all sizes has mostly been focused on the measurement of interest and liquidity risk, the modelling of client behaviour for retail business like non-maturing deposits, and the simulation of the net interest income. His project work is bracketed by the strong interest for data integration and IT system consolidation, linking risk management, planning and controlling, and regulatory reporting, which are essential for an adequate bank steering in volatile and fast evolving markets. 

Dr Hübsch studied physics in Dresden. After receiving his PhD in theoretical condensed matter theory, he went to the Universities of California in Davis and San Diego where he worked on the electronic structure of DNA based systems. Back in Germany he started his professional career at d-fine and did in parallel a MSc in quantitative finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

Kira Huneke is a manager at d-fine with several years of experience delivering transformation projects across the insurance and asset management industries. She specializes in supporting organizations in the digitalization, automation, and AI-enabled optimization of business processes, with a focus on developing efficient and scalable operating models. Her work includes identifying optimization potential, translating business requirements into practical solutions, and leading digital and process improvement initiatives.  

Mrs Huneke graduated with a master’s degree in business information systems from the University of Trier and completed an MBA at Mannheim Business School. 

Christian Kappen is a Senior Manager at d-fine with more than 13 years of experience in quantitative finance. He has a track record in derivatives pricing & hedging, counterparty credit risk modelling, model validation, and banking supervision, with clients both in the banking and in the energy sector. 

Before joining d-fine, Dr Kappen worked as a researcher in pure mathematics (arithmetic algebraic geometry): at the MIT, the University of Münster and the University of Duisburg-Essen. He holds a PhD in mathematics (University of Münster) and an MSc in mathematical finance (Oxford University). 

Fascinated by the non-intuitive nature of quantum physics, Pascal Kobel has spent more than eight years exploring quantum networks, quantum optics, and their technological potential in university research. After earning his Ph.D.  from the University of Bonn in 2021, he joined OHB, initially as Project Manager and Technology Coordinator for Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs). Since 2024 he is leading the Quantum Technology and Systems team, working to transform quantum science into practical space and communication technologies.

Franziska Krüger is a Senior Manager at d-fine. She has worked on a broad range of capital markets, transformation, and software development projects, with a focus on analyzing and optimizing front-to-back processes as well as supporting clients in the design and implementation of efficient operating models. In recent years, her work has included topics around automation and digital transformation in capital markets, including data-driven initiatives aimed at improving efficiency and operational resilience.  

Mrs Krüger holds a master’s degree in Technomathematics from TU Berlin and a Postgraduate Diploma in Mathematical Finance from the University of Oxford.

Matteo Manek is a member of d-fine’s Industrial Solutions team, focusing on data-driven challenges in manufacturing, particularly AI-based quality control, process optimization, and automation. His work includes Physical AI, connecting robotic simulation with real-world deployment. Before joining d-fine, he gained experience in shop-floor digitalization and smart manufacturing at a German hidden champion. 

Mr. Manek holds a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering and a MSc in Automation Engineering from RWTH Aachen University.   

Dominik Mitzel is a Junior Research Group Leader at TU Dortmund University, funded through the DFG Emmy Noether Programme, and a member of the LHCb collaboration at CERN. His research focuses on precision flavour physics, with particular emphasis on rare charm-hadron decays, CP violation, and searches for physics beyond the Standard Model.

Dominik received his PhD in physics from Heidelberg University for his work on charm decays at LHCb. Prior to joining TU Dortmund, he held research positions at CERN and Heidelberg University. 'I am very much looking forward to returning to Heidelberg for a week', he says, 'a city where I greatly enjoyed living for 10 years, and to contributing to the HGSFP’s teaching programme'.

Ivelina Momcheva is an astrophysicist and Data Science Group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA). Her work combines observational extragalactic astronomy with computational and machine learning methods for large survey datasets. She is a member and key contributor to projects with the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, Euclid and Roman. Her research interests center on the physical processes that shape galaxy evolution across cosmic time and environment, including the use of gravitational lensing as a probe of galaxy structure and evolution. She is also interested in the development of open-source scientific software and data analysis infrastructure that bridge astronomy and data science.

Beatrice Ramm leads a Max Planck Research Group on Synthetic Biology Approaches to Pattern Formation at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tübingen. Her group studies how living systems organize in space and time, combining bottom-up in vitro reconstitution, protein engineering, (mammalian) synthetic biology and quantitative microscopy. 

Beatrice received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, carried out in Petra Schwille's Department of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. There, she worked with the oscillatory E. coli MinDE reaction-diffusion system, showing that MinDE positions and transports unrelated membrane proteins through a physical, non-specific mechanism termed diffusiophoresis. As an independent Fellow at Princeton's Center for the Physics of Biological Function, she worked with Jared Toettcher to apply synthetic biology and protein engineering to the dynamics of extracellular proteases. 

Julian Schmitt is Professor of Experimental Physics at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at Heidelberg University, where he leads the Optical Quantum Systems research group. His research focuses on quantum gases of light in optical microcavities, exploring thermodynamics, topological states, physical computation, and open many-body quantum systems with photons. He received his PhD from the University of Bonn, where he contributed to the first realisation of Bose–Einstein condensation of photons and pioneered studies of their coherence properties. During a postdoctoral stay at the University of Cambridge, he investigated topological superfluidity in two-dimensional ultracold atomic gases. Before joining Heidelberg University, he was a junior research group leader in Bonn. His work has been recognised with several prestigious awards, including an ERC Starting Grant, the Rudolf Kaiser Prize for Experimental Physics, and the North Rhine-Westphalia Science Prize.

Tino Schulz is Principal at d-fine and has over 13 years of experience in advising banks on projects related to market price risk management. While focussing on interest rate risk, his projects revolve around the efficient interplay between modern risk architectures and regulatory requirements. 

Before joining d-fine, he studied technical mathematics at TU Dresden and earned a PhD in applied geometry from JKU Linz. Additionally, Dr Schulz holds an MBA from Mannheim Business School. 

Alex Vano-Vinuales carried out his undergraduate studies in physics, followed by a PhD in numerical relativity and gravitational physics, at the University of the Balearic Islands in Palma de Mallorca (Spain). After that he held postdoctoral positions at Cardiff University (United Kingdom) and IST at the University of Lisbon (Portugal), before going back to the University of the Balearic Islands. He has also visited IUCAA (India), Perimeter Institute (Canada), Kyoto University (Japan), Caltech (USA) and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). Alex has worked on the fields of numerical relativity and gravitational waves, contributing to waveform modelling, critical collapse, and his main focus is on the numerical treatment of the far-field region.