I am a physicist dedicated to large-scale numerical optimization for real-world (geospatial) applications.

CURRENT. I am a researcher at the Earth Observation Center of the German Aerospace Center (Conrad.Albrecht@DLR.de). Since April 2021, I am the PI of the HelmholtzAI Young Investigator Group (YIG) Large-Scale Data Mining in Earth Observation (DM4EO).

In July 2023, I was appointed as a visiting associate professor with the Institute of Nasca at Yamagata University, Japan contributing to research in machine learning for the UNESCO World Heritage of the Nasca culture in Peru. Since fall 2024, I am teaching and supervising as Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, USA.

PREVIOUS. My YIG was affiliated with the Chair of Data Science in Earth Observation at the Technical University of Munich, where I was involved in master student seminar programs, for years 2021 to 2024. From 2015 through 2021, I was a research scientist in the Physical Sciences department at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, NY, USA. While at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, I graduated in physics (International Max-Planck Research School for Quantum Dynamics in Physics, Chemistry and Biology) with an extra certification in computer science (Cluster- & Detector Management team at CERN, Switzerland) and received a corresponding Ph.D. degree from Heidelberg University, Germany in 2014. In my Ph.D. thesis, I employed distributed computing to study physics at low temperatures.

AGENDA. Broadly speaking, my research interconnects physical modeling and numerical analysis. Specifically, my work contributes to:

1. Machine learning and numerical optimization to advance artificial intelligence for spatio-temporal data

2. Development of scalable algorithms and compute pipelines for scientific big data analytics

3. Remote sensing archaeology, anthropology, and ethics -  including widespread access to research through open science

I am home in Europe and the United States. My work intends to initiate, foster, and strengthen long-term transatlantic scientific collaboration with academia, the public sector, and industry to make a difference for social good.

Some of my contributions to that effort include: In 2023, I was invited by the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation to present at the German-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposium at Juelich Supercomputing Center. Beginning in 2024, initiated by Helmholtz Imaging and Data Science, I am in close touch with the German Department at Princeton University for cross-atlantic undergraduate internships.
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