Biography
I am a postdoc and Schmidt Science Fellow in the Ermon Lab at Stanford University. I want to help to alleviate global hunger. In my current work, I focus on statistical and machine learning models improving the prediction of crop yields in Africa, which depend on periods of drought or enhanced rainfall.
Before joining Stanford, I completed my PhD in the working group Atmospheric Dynamics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, where I worked with mathematicians to describe—at daily, weekly, and intraseasonal timescales—how different types of atmospheric waves create dry and wet periods over Africa, while demonstrating their potential for statistical rainfall forecasting.
Currently, I develop a new tropical crop forecasting model by applying statistical and machine learning methods to satellite and numerical weather data. In my Schmidt Science Fellowship year, I will draw on previous experience and expertise to develop a real-time crop-yield prediction model for Africa. With the Ermon Lab at Stanford, I aim to achieve this via a combination of real-time satellite observations, weather forecasts, and machine learning techniques. Using neural networks, I hope to also build on investigations I have previously led on the influence of variable oceanic modes such as the El-Niño in the Pacific Ocean on crop yields in Tanzania, with the goal of testing whether such models can be used as predictors for crop yield more widely.
I am also part of the Sustain Lab and am excited by the potential of interdisciplinary “computational sustainability”. I hope to contribute to this new field as it aims to address sustainability challenges through computational methods.
Interests
- Tropical Meteorology
- Agriculture and Remote Sensing
- Statistical Forecasting and Machine Learning
Education
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PhD in Atmospheric Physics, 2019
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
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MSc in Tropical and International Forestry, 2015
Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany
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BSc in Meteorology, 2012
Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
