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The European Hub for Data Science
 

PROFIRA RUSU

Software Development Student @HyperIsland, Stockholm, Sweden

Profira graduated from “Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and began her career in education before transitioning into software development. Self-taught in Angular, she has over four years of experience in front-end development and is currently studying at HyperIsland in Stockholm, specialising in React. She is also interning at Podmanager.ai, where she works with Python and React in an international team of testers, UX designers, and developers.

Additionally, she contributes to WiDS Zurich. Passionate about design, typography, and usability, Profira blends creativity, precision, and strong organisational skills. Curious by nature, she enjoys exploring NLP, experimenting with design details, and expressing her creativity through crafts and joyful, well-structured digital experiences.

 
 

PAULINA KRAWCZYK

Data Scientist/Product Owner @SwissRe

Paulina Krawczyk is a Data Scientist and Product Owner with a strong track record of driving data-driven innovation in the insurance sector.
Passionate about diversity, inclusion, and community-building, Paulina is committed to challenging the status quo and creating spaces where different voices are heard and valued.

 
 

ALKETA GUXHA 

AVP, Finance Technology & Data @Allianz Global Investors

Alketa currently works at Allianz Global Investors in the Finance Technology & Data department, where she plays a key role in strengthening the organization’s data ecosystem. In her role, she analyzes financial datasets, performs data quality assessments, and applies feature engineering techniques to ensure data is accurate, consistent, and ready for advanced analytics. Her work supports a wide range of financial reporting, performance analysis, modelling and data-driven decision making across the business.

    Previously, Alketa worked as an AI & Data Scientist at Vodafone, where she applied machine learning and artificial intelligence to solve real business challenges and deliver personalized customer solutions at scale. She also served as a committee member of Vodafone Women in Technology (WiT), where she actively contributed to initiatives promoting diversity and inclusion in the technology sector.

     She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, USA, and combines her strong technical background with a deep passion for applying AI to create meaningful, real-world impact. Alketa is passionate about the transformative potential of data and firmly believes that AI can drive positive change across industries. She enjoys connecting with others to exchange ideas and explore innovative ways to use AI to solve complex problems, enhance customer experiences, and make a lasting, positive impact in the world.

 
 

ALISA SMIRNOVA

NLP Researcher

Alisa Smirnova is an NLP researcher with a Ph.D. from the University of Fribourg and a strong focus on relation extraction, with publications at CIKM, TKDE, and WWW. During the last years of her doctoral studies, she has led a research team at Toloka, driving projects in LLM instruction tuning and data quality. Alisa combines technical expertise with a keen interest in cross-functional project management. She also enjoys organizing research events and workshops.

 
 

ANA PAULA ARMENDARIZ PACHECO

PhD Candidate in Economics @University of St. Gallen

Ana Armendariz is a PhD student in Economics at the University of St. Gallen with a focus on health economics, causal inference, and applied econometrics. Her research examines the impact of Drug Consumption Rooms on health and criminal outcomes in Switzerland, combining individual-level hospital data with modern difference-in-differences and causal machine learning methods. She also contributes to projects on heterogeneous treatment effects and overfitting in optimal policy learning. Ana speaks five languages and enjoys combining analytical research with practical policy relevance. She is passionate about teaching, clear scientific communication, and using data to understand and improve public health interventions.

 
 

FEDERICA MASCOLO

PhD Candidate in Economics & Econometrics @University of St. Gallen

Federica is a PhD student at the University of St. Gallen. Her research lies at the intersection of machine learning and causal inference, with applications to labour economics. She has also worked at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and at the European Central Bank. These experiences are tied together by her strong interest in leveraging data to understand economic processes.

 
 

MICHAELA PONCET MACAKOVA

Portfolio analyst @Alpiq

Michaela Poncet Macakova holds a master’s degree in Mathematics from ETH Zürich, where she specialized in statistics and machine learning. She has worked as a data scientist at the Swiss Post and BKW, and recently transitioned into a portfolio analyst role in energy trading at Alpiq. In her current position, she focuses on driving data-based decision-making, refining pricing approaches and strengthening forecasting models for the portfolio’s energy consumption. 

Michaela is passionate about building models and uncovering actionable insights from data. She enjoys combining expert knowledge with data-driven methods to develop practical business solutions. She is also committed to sustainability and promoting diversity within the tech community.

 

 

 

SARAH SCHÜRCH

Solution Architect IBM, Data Scientist @M.Sc. ZHAW

With a passion for understanding the human mind, Sarah Schürch began her career in psychology before moving into business informatics, AI and the world of data. After completing her Bachelor’s degree in Business Informatics, for which she received the award for the best bachelor thesis, she joined IBM while pursuing her Master’s in Data Science.

 

 

 

IOANNA KARAGIANNI

MSc Student Computational Linguistics IMS, Working Student FSTI

Ioanna is a Master’s student in Computational Linguistics with a specialization in Speech Processing at the Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung (IMS) at the University of Stuttgart. She is currently writing her thesis on Voice Privacy. In October 2024, she was among the selected 30 finalists from 500 women in Greece to attend a fully funded 6-month Bootcamp in Data Science and Business Intelligence organized by a Greek initiative supporting women in STEM. There, she enhanced her abilities to work with data-driven methodologies, gain experience on analytical and statistical techniques, and apply her acquired skills in database handling, python, ML, DL and visualization tools. 

Since February 2025, she has been a working student at the Ferdinand Steinbeis Institute in Heilbronn, where her research tasks, among others, include agentic AI, Large Language Models, data handling, and data analysis. In the future she is interested into developing AI systems and solutions with direct positive societal impact. 

 

 

 

MEENU BHARGAVA

Senior Project Manager

@ University of Sankt Gallen

Meenu has an MSc. in Computer Science. She currently works at the University of Sankt Gallen as a product owner and data scientist. She is part of a team that publishes the St Gallen Benchmarking Analysis,  a benchmarking analysis that looks at diversity and inclusion indicators across different companies. In addition, as part of the CCDI, it contributes to the Gender Intelligence Report, which is an aggregate analysis of the state of the member companies in terms of diversity and inclusion.

Additionally,  she is the product owner of a new application where companies can individualize their dashboards to view diversity and inclusion metrics for their companies and benchmark them against industry peers and means.
She is PMI-ACP certified and loves to do improv.

 

 

 

PATRICIA FERREIRO

Founder & CEO @Luar Labs
Co-Director AI for Business Leaders SAS @HSLU

Patricia Ferreiro is the Founder of Luar Labs, a Zurich-based Think&Do tank focused on AI literacy and strategic advisory. Luar Labs blends philosophy and technical expertise to support leaders developing a sound, human-centric AI strategy.

    A seasoned leader with a decade of experience at the intersection of AI and business, Patricia has held key roles at tech giants including IBM, Databricks, and Microsoft, where she served as Industry CTO. Her expertise lies in translating complex technological possibilities into clear value, defining and executing data strategies that drive global organizational success.

     Patricia holds a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering, a Master’s in Data Science, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Contemporary Philosophy.