STRADA Inaugural Conference
On August 24 and 25 2026 in Room S003 at UniS
Confirmed Speakers
Jun Ding
McGill University
keynote
Steffen Schneider
Helmholtz Munich
keynote
Houman Owhadi
Caltech
keynote
Olga Perski
Stockholm University
keynote
Brice-Olivier Demory
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Janna Hastings
Idiap
Invited Speaker
Katharina Heyden
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Lucien Hinderling
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Julie Jebeile
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Rosa Lavelle-Hill
Universität Basel
Invited Speaker
Thomas Lemmin
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Mykola Makhortykh
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
George Pacey
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Olivia Romppainen-Martius
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Julia Schmid
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Elena Spadini
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Raphael Sznitman
Universität Bern
Invited Speaker
Conference Organizers
Claus Beisbart
Paolo Favaro
David Ginsbourger
Jennifer Inauen
Stavroula Mougiakakou
Anja Mühlemann
Scientific Comittee
Philipp Baumann
Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences
Sarah Brüningk
Faculty of Medicine
Stefan Brönnimann
Faculty of Science
Malte Elson
Faculty of Human Sciences
Sigve Haug
Faculty of Science
Tobias Hodel
Faculty of Humanities
Lisa Koch
Faculty of Medicine
Guillaume Obozinski
Swiss Data Science Center
Stephan Peischl
Interfaculty Bioinformatics Unit
Silvia Quarteroni
Swiss Data Science Center
Jean-Louis Reymond
Faculty of Science
Georgia Salanti
Faculty of Medicine
Athina Tzovara
Faculty of Science &
Faculty of Medicine
Schedule
Day 1: August 24th
| Time | Session | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30-9:00 | Check-in | |
| 9:00-9:30 | Welcome | |
| 9:30-10:30 | Keynote Talk – Automating Algorithm Discovery with Computational Language Processing | Prof. Houman Owhadi |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee break | ☕ |
| 11:00-11:30 | Alignment with Prior Knowledge – an Ingredient for Reproducible AI? | Prof. Janna Hastings |
| 11:30-12:00 | Machine Learning in Climate Science: An Epistemological Overview | Prof. Julie Jebeile |
| 12:00-12:30 | Poster Spotlight Session | |
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | |
| 13:30-14:00 | Dessert and Posters | 🍰 |
| 14:00-15:00 | Keynote Talk – Identifiable Representation Learning for Scientific Discovery | Prof. Steffen Schneider |
| 15:00-15:30 | Like a Child Shooting an Arrow: AI Facing the Source Problems of Historical Research | Prof. Katharina Heyden |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee Break | ☕ |
| 16:00-16:30 | Are There Things That Do Not Scale? Applying AI to Study Atrocity Remembrance in the Post-Human Memory Ecosystem | Dr. Mykola Makhortykh |
| 16:30-17:00 | AI and Structured Data in the (Digital) Humanities: Do We Need Either? | Prof. Elena Spadini |
| 17:00-17:30 | Smart Microscopes: From Automation to Autonomy | Dr. Lucien Hinderling |
Day 2: August 25th
| Time | Session | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00-10:00 | Keynote Talk – Decoding Cellular Dynamics with Deep Generative AI for Virtual Disease Modeling and Therapeutic Discovery | Prof. Jun Ding |
| 10:00-10:30 | AI Weather Forecast Models and the Challenge of Forecasting Out-of-Distribution Weather Extremes | Prof. Olivia Romppainen Martius and Dr. George Pacey |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break | ☕ |
| 11:00-11:30 | Investigating Our Universe’s Best-Kept Secrets in a Data-Intensive Regime: Ushering in a New Era in Astrophysics | Prof. Brice-Olivier Demory |
| 11:30-12:00 | Supercharging an AI-MedTech Diagnostic Platform: An Interdisciplinary and Translational Perspective | Prof. Raphael Sznitman |
| 12:00-12:30 | Poster Spotlight Session | |
| 12:30-13:30 | Lunch | |
| 13:30-14:00 | Dessert and Posters | 🍰 |
| 14:00-15:00 | Keynote Talk – From Theory Crisis to Precision: How Formal and Computational Modelling Can Advance Scientific Practice in Psychology and Beyond | Prof. Olga Perski |
| 15:00-15:30 | Protein Modeling and Design in the Era of Deep Representation Learning | Prof. Thomas Lemmin |
| 15:30-16:00 | Coffee Break | ☕ |
| 16:00-16:30 | “What Type of Exercise Suits Me?”: Personalized Recommendations for Exercise Matching Using a Machine Learning Approach | Prof. Rosa Lavelle-Hill and PD Dr. Julia Schmid |
| 16:30-17:00 | Closing |