Ludwig Winkler

I'm a PhD student (with a submitted thesis) at the TU Berlin Machine Learning Group under Klaus-Robert Müller and Manfred Opper. Over the course of my studies I gravitated towards machine learning fields with rigorous mathematics. Before I knew it, I ended up working on stochastic processes and stochastic differential equations. These have given me plenty of grey hair ... but maybe that's just my age.

In particular, I have trained neural networks in stochastic differential equations in order to solve optimal transport problems and infer the corresponding stochastic process. The stochastic processes I tackled include SDE's, CTMC's, the connection between SDE's and CTMC's in generative modelling and the Schrödinger Bridge Problem. I especially enjoy the mathematical rigor of stochastic processes and probabilistic machine learning in general.

Currently I'm spending time at Prescient Design within Genentech/Roche designing and implementing advanced sampling and sample optimization schemes for protein generation and manipulation with machine learning.

Besides my research activity, history in conjunction with economics and politics has been a long standing interest of mine. As I grew older the link between economics and history became more evident to me and my focus shifted to economic and financial history which often does a superb job at explaining the latent forces that shape history.

I have been remarkably lucky to be living in Berlin where I explore the multitude of different subcultures that exist so harmoniously in this city. Berlin represents something of an ideal city for me as its history has enabled subcultures to thrive while offering abundant intellectual goodies ranging from art&music, a lot of techno, to blockchain and machine learning.