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Hi, I am Anna-Lena

Anna-Lena Popkes

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at inovex

I am an enthusiastic learner always looking for new challenges to expand my knowledge and skills. I am deeply fascinated by machine learning and its applications to questions that affect and benefit society. This translates into a passion for teaching, where I can share my insights and contribute to the collective growth of the machine learning community.

Machine Learning
Generative AI
Python
Research
Engineering
Teaching

Skills

Experiences

1
inovex

02/2020 - Present

Cologne

inovex is an IT project center driven by innovation and quality, focusing its services on digital transformation.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

02/2020 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • 06.2023 until today (under NDA). Working in the speech recognition team. Main tasks are setting up an MLOps pipeline in AWS, taking existing ML models into production.
  • 02.2023 until today (inovex). Lead developer and teacher of inovex Python trainings.
  • 04.2023 - 11.2023 (inovex). Supervision of bachelor thesis in the field of LLMs. Title “A Question Answering-based Search Engine for Bachelor and Master Theses Documents”
  • 09.2022 - 08.2023 (under NDA). Development of a forecasting engine
  • 09.2022 - 12.2022 (under NDA). Python Code Quality Coaching
  • 06.2021 - 12.2021 (inovex). Supervision of master thesis in the field of recommender systems
  • 07.2021 - 10.2021 (under NDA). Creation of a POC on the topic of consumer decision trees
  • 04.2021 - 07.2021 (under NDA). Creation of a POC on the topic of demand forecasting
  • 02.2020 - 04.2021 (under NDA). Conceptual design and implementation of a data lake in the Google Cloud

KI macht Schule

05/2019 - Present

Everywhere in Germany

KI macht Schule offers free courses on AI and ML to German school kids. Our goal is to educate the next generation on these important topics, allowing them to understand and discuss new developments and challenges.

Voluntary work

05/2019 - Present

Responsibilities:
  • Being a course instructor
  • Coordinate school requests
  • Develop and prepare courses
2

3

Cambridge, UK

Machine Learning Engineer (AI Resident)

09/2018 - 10/2019

Responsibilities:
  • One of the first participants in the Microsoft AI Residency program in Cambridge, UK.
  • The AI Residency is an educational program, focused on teaching skills necessary for becoming an excellent research/machine learning engineer.
  • Within the program I worked in the role of a full-time research engineer, applying machine learning to real-world problems.

Palo Alto, California, USA

Deep Learning Intern

05/2018 - 10/2018

Responsibilities:
  • Work of deep learning projects, mostly focused on computer vision applications and image recognition tasks
4

5

Sankt Augustin, Germany

Machine Learning Research Assistant

09/2016 - 05/2018

Responsibilities:
  • Research and industrial projects on machine learning, especially neural networks and reinforcement learning

Harvard Medical School

08/2014 - 11/2014

Cambridge, USA

Research assistant

08/2014 - 11/2014

Responsibilities:
  • Research assistant at Prof. Nadine Gaab’s laboratory for developmental cognitive neuroscience
  • Investigation of perceptual, cognitive and brain development in typically developing infants and children, as well as children diagnosed with or at risk for various developmental disorders
6

Education

Master's Degree Computer Science
GPA: 4 out of 4
Description:
  • The University of Bonn is one of eleven German Universities of Excellence, the only university with six Clusters of Excellence and more Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists have emerged from from it in the past decades than from any other German university.
  • I gained deep theoretical knowledge about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning via the intelligent systems focus track.
Bachelor's Degree Cognitive Science
GPA: 4 out of 4
Description:
  • Focus modules were Neuroinformatics, Computer Science, Neuroscience, Cognitive (Neuro-) Psychology, Philosophy of Mind and Cognition

Projects

ML Basics
ML Basics
Owner Feb 2018 - Present

Plain python implementations of basic machine learning algorithms

Magical Universe
Magical Universe
Owner August 2018 - Present

Awesome Python features explained using the world of magic

Horseshoe Bayesian Neural Network
Horseshoe Bayesian Neural Network
Contributor July 2018

A Bayesian Neural Network with a horseshoe prior for improved interpretability

Interpretable Outcome Prediction with Sparse Bayesian Neural Networks in Intensive Care
Author May 2020

Clinical decision making is challenging because of pathological complexity, as well as large amounts of heterogeneousdata generated as part of routine clinical care. In recent years,machine learning tools have been developed to aid this process […]

LSTM Language Model
LSTM Language Model
Owner Feb 2018

LSTM-based language model in TensorFlow

Language Modeling with Recurrent Neural Networks - Using Transfer Learning to Perform Radiological Sentence Completion
Author March 2018

Motivated by the potential benefits of a system that accelerates the process of writing radiological reports, we present a Recurrent Neural Network Language Model for modeling radiological language […]

Tensorflow deep learning models
Tensorflow deep learning models
Owner April 2017

TensorFlow implementations of several deep learning models (e.g. variational autoencoder, RNN)

PyTorch deep learning models
PyTorch deep learning models
Owner July 2018

PyTorch implementations of deep learning models

Recent Posts

Talks & Podcasts

Guest at "Talk Python to Me"
Guest at "Talk Python to Me"
Talk Python To Me Nov 1, 2023

I’m a guest at “Talk Python to Me” to talk about packaging and environment management.

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Guest at the German "Python Podcast"
Guest at the German "Python Podcast"
Python Podcast Oct 6, 2023

I’m a guest at the German “Python Podcast” to talk about packaging and environment management.

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Talk at EuroPython 2023
Talk at EuroPython 2023
EuroPython Jul 19, 2023

Title of the talk: An unbiased evaluation of environment management and packaging tools

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Talk at PyCon DE 2023
Talk at PyCon DE 2023
PyCon DE Apr 17, 2023

Title of the talk: An unbiased evaluation of environment management and packaging tools

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Talk at EuroPython 2021
Talk at EuroPython 2021
EuroPython Jul 27, 2021

I gave a new version of my talk “Finding Magic in Python”, talking about several Python features using a magical universe called “The Tales of Castle Kilmere”.

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SpeakUp interview at Women in Tech
SpeakUp interview at Women in Tech
SpeakUp, Women in Tech Jun 16, 2021

I’m a guest at the “#SpeakUp” series of Women in Tech, talking about teaching kids about AI and ML, how it’s like to be a women in tech, and much more.

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Testing without dependencies, mocking in Python
Testing without dependencies, mocking in Python
Talk Python To Me Oct 21, 2020

I’m a guest at “Talk Python to Me” to talk about TDD and mocking in Python.

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Finding Magic in Python - Keynote at PyCon Estonia
Finding Magic in Python - Keynote at PyCon Estonia
PyCon Estonia Oct 13, 2020

Keynote talk at PyCon Estonia. I explained some of Python’s exciting features using the world of magic.

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100 Days of Python in a Magical Universe
100 Days of Python in a Magical Universe
Talk Python To Me Nov 16, 2018

I’m joining Michael on “Talk Python to Me” to talk about my 100 days of code challenge for which I created a magical Python universe.

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Dropping by on the Python Bytes Podcast
Dropping by on the Python Bytes Podcast
Python Bytes September 11, 2020

I’m a guest at “Python Bytes” to talk about recent Python developer news.

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Mocking in Python
Mocking in Python
Test & Code September 28, 2020

I joined the “Test & Code” podcast to talk about TDD and mocking in Python.

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