Steffen Remus

Steffen Remus, Dr.rer.nat.

Professional Title: Postdoctoral Researcher & Lecturer
Location: Hamburg, Germany

How to reach me (preferably in that order):
     Github
     LinkedIn
     Institutional
     OrcId
     Google Scholar

A highly dedicated research engineer with over 10 years of professional hands-on experience in:

• Developing machine learning algorithms and managing large-scale data engineering projects, with a primary focus on natural language processing.
• Software engineering, utilizing industry-standard tools and processes.
• Leading and managing individuals and teams, fostering individual growth and collaboration.
• Administering and maintaining server infrastructure.

I actively share my expertise through my current role as a (co-) lecturer and advisor, and as a freelance consultant for industry partners. As a researcher, I thrive in fast-paced environments and I am committed to staying at the forefront of advancements in machine learning and AI. I approach challenges with patience and a strong attention to detail, and I excel in bridging technical expertise with effective communication, ensuring strong teamwork and maintaining high levels of motivation. My leadership style is collaborative and adaptive, focusing on fostering a positive team environment, encouraging open communication, and empowering individuals to reach their full potential.

Core Skills & Expertise

Machine Learning & AI

• NLP, Deep Learning, GenAI, Information Extraction, Information Retrieval, LLMs, RAG

Software Engineering

• CI/CD, TDD, DevOps, Containerization, Microservices, Webservices

Data Engineering

• SQL, NoSQL, Vector Databases, MapReduce, Cluster Management, DFS, ETL

Management & Leadership

• Research Collaborations, Teaching, Supervision, Project Management, SCRUM, Workshop Organization

Problem-Solving & Analysis

• Critical Thinking, Algorithmic Design

Technical Skills

Programming Languages

• Python, Java, JavaScript, R, LaTeX, Scala, C#

Data & ML Frameworks

• PyTorch, Spark, Hadoop, Scikit-Learn

Databases

• PostgreSQL, PgVector, Milvus, ChromaDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, ...

Cloud & DevOps

• AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, SSH

Languages & Interests

Languages

• German (native), English (fluent), Spanish & French (basic)

Interests

• Running, Kitesurfing, Road Biking, Technology, Problem-Solving

Language Technology Group & HITeC e.V., University of Hamburg, Germany

• Postdoctoral Research Scientist — since 07/2023
• Pre-doctoral Research Scientist — 10/2016 to 06/2023

Outline: Conducted original research under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Chris Biemann, participated in project-related events, offered consultancy services for industry partners, developed and delivered courses in machine learning, NLP, and software engineering, supervised theses, student helpers and interns, maintained technical infrastructure and ensured its uptime.

Key Responsibilities: Teaching, Supervision, Research Projects & Server infrastructure maintenance: managing a Hadoop cluster that supports a distributed Elasticsearch cluster, two GPU servers, and several web servers; hosting demo applications as Docker containers.

Key Achievements:

• Successfully defended Ph.D. in June, 2023
• Organized four research workshops and served 50+ times as a reviewer
• Gained leadership qualifications during 19 teaching activities; supervised over 30 theses, interns, and student helpers
• Contributed to over 30 small to medium sized software projects
• (Co-)authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications

Freelance Consulting Services (Occasional & Part-Time)

• Research Consultant (Ad hoc engagements) — occasional since 2016

Outline: Provided project-based freelance consultancy services, specializing in NLP research and offering expert guidance on various related topics.

Clients include: Glanos GmbH (Munich), T-Systems (Darmstadt), Merck KGaA (Darmstadt)

International Business Machines (IBM)

• Research Intern, Zurich Research Lab, Rüschlikon, Switzerland — 05/2015 to 11/2015

Supervisor: Dr. Abdel Labbi & Dr. Alfio Gliozzo

Outline: Collaborated closely with Angela Fahrni on supervised relation extraction and event detection, utilizing distributional features.

Key Responsibilities:
Implemented a system for named entity recognition, cross-sentence relation extraction, and event detection using distributional features & Conducted (small) internal crowdsourcing task for relation annotation.

• Research Intern, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA — 07/2014 to 10/2014

Supervisor: Dr. Alfio Gliozzo

Outline: Implemented, tested, and evaluated distributional semantic methods to enhance knowledge graphs for open and closed domains.

Technical University of Darmstadt & Deutsches Institut für Pädagogische Forschung (DIPF)

• Researcher, KDSL Graduate School Program — 04/2013 to 06/2016

Key Responsibilities: Project crawling & semantic structuring.
Key Achievements: Co-authored 6 peer-reviewed papers; organized a one-day IBM Watson workshop.

ConWeaver GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany

• Software Engineer (full time) — 10/2012 to 05/2013
• Software Engineer (part-time student assistant) — 2009 to 09/2012

Other roles:

• Tutoring & teaching positions at Technical University of Darmstadt (2009–2012)
• Systems Administrator at JDS-Sommer GmbH (2007–2008)
• Part-time job at Greater Union Filmpalast (2002–2006)
• (EWSD) Systems Specialist at Siemens AG (2000–2003)
• Apprenticeship for Information and Telecommunications Systems Electronics Technician / Ausbildung als Informations- und Telekommunikationssystem Elektroniker (1997–2000)

Dr.rer.nat. (Ph.D.) in Computer Science — University of Hamburg, Germany, 2023
Thesis: “Domain Defining Context: On Domain-Dependent Corpus Expansion and Contextualized Semantic Structuring” — Advisor: Prof. Dr. Chris Biemann

M.Sc. in Computer Science (Linguistics minor) — Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, 2012
Thesis: “Automatically Identifying Lexical Chains by Means of Statistical Methods – A Knowledge-Free Approach” — Nominated for best thesis award (GSCL) — Advisor: Prof. Dr. Chris Biemann

B.Sc. in Computer Science — Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, 2009
Thesis: “Next-Gen IDE – Evaluation Of Statistical Approaches For Intelligent Code Completion” — Advisor: Dr. Marcel Bruch

State Certified Engineer (Techniker) in Computer Systems & Networking — Werner von Siemens Professional School, Frankfurt, 2005

State Certified Apprenticeship in Information and Telecommunications Systems Electronics Technician — Siemens AG, Frankfurt, 2000

High School — Brüder Grimm Realschule, Frankfurt, 1997

Volunteering

• Member of the appointments committee (Berufungskommission) for the Machine Learning professorship, University of Hamburg (2020/21)

Certifications

• Attended 28th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLI), Bolzano-Bozen, Aug 2016

Research Projects

• JOIN-T2: Joining Ontologies with Text (03/2019–02/2022)
• WebAnno meets EXMARaLDA (06/2017–01/2019)
• BIMDanube: Network of Excellence on Biomedical Information Management in the Danube Region (01/2017–03/2019)
• JOIN-T: Joining Ontologies and Semantics Induced from Text (2016–2017)
• Knowledge Discovery in Scientific Literature (KDSL) (04/2013–06/2016)

Visiting Researcher

• Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Israel — 04/2014–06/2014 (with Omer Levy & Prof. Ido Dagan)
• Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur — 02/2019–04/2019 (with Animesh Mukherjee & Pawan Goyal)

Organizing Committee & Program Committee

• Organizer/Co-organizer for GermEval shared tasks (2019, 2020) and multiple workshops (Biomedical Information Management 2018 & 2019; IBM Watson workshop 2014)
• Reviewer for conferences: EMNLP, ACL, AAAI, CONLL, *SEM, NAACL, EACL, AACL-IJCNLP, Coling, LREC, GSCL/KONVENS, COLM
• Reviewer for journals: TPAMI, TACL, NLE
• Workshop reviewing: TextGraphs, SemEval, WAC

Curricula

• University of Hamburg: multiple lecturer and teaching assistant roles in Research Software Engineering, Python for Computational Science, Deep Learning for NLP, Web Interfaces for Language Processing Systems, Applications with Aspects on Language Technology, Software Engineering I, Deep Learning for Unstructured Data, Statistical Methods of Language Technology, Machine Learning I, Practical Applications in NLP.
• Technical University of Darmstadt: Lecturer and teaching assistant roles including Q&A Technologies behind IBM Watson, Algorithms of Language Technology, General Computer Science.

Thesis Supervision

I provide dedicated supervision for student helpers, inters and academic theses, including ten Bachelor’s theses, eleven Master’s theses and three independent studies up to date. I regularly lead one-on-one progress meetings on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, ensuring consistent academic development, timely completion, and overall project success

• 2022: Mentor for a student research project awarded €10,000.
• 2019: Awarded over €3,000 by the German DAAD office for international research in India.
• 2015: Best mentoring award for “Algorithms of Language Technology” exercise lab.
• 2013, 2014, 2016: ACL Travel Grants.
• 2013–2016: KDSL Graduate School Fellowship.
• 2013: Travel grant of €1,000 from Freunde der TU-Darmstadt e.V.

• (Co-)authored over 30+ peer-reviewed papers.
• Contributed to 50+ open source project repositories on various version control platforms (github, bitbucket, sourceforge, ...) of which I am maintainer/creator of 20+ projects.