Niclas Dern

I am a first-year PhD student in Statistics at UC Berkeley. My research motivation is to make large-scale machine learning systems more robust, interpretable, and trustworthy, ideally in a principled manner.

I completed my undergraduate studies in mathematics at the Technical University of Munich. Most recently, I worked as a machine learning research intern at IMC Trading and as a software engineering intern at Tacto. Previously, I interned at the Vector Institute with Geoff Pleiss on theoretical properties of ensembles, and at the Helmholtz AI Institute with Niki Kilbertus and Elisabeth Ailer on estimating nonlinear causal effects in confounded environments. I also co-founded Mathis, an AI tutor for German high school students.

During my undergraduate degree, I was supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and am an Atlas Fellow (2022) and winner of the National Student Championships in Computer Science (Germany, 2020). In my free time, I enjoy writing, reading, swimming, traveling, and meeting new people.