Unlocking consumer insights to boost loyalty and business value
Stefan Feuerriegel heads the new Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Management. He holds a dual affiliation as a full professor at LMU Munich School of Management and the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics, and Statistics at LMU Munich. In 2024 he visited the Stanford University in the USA as a Visiting Scholar. Previously, Stefan was an assistant professor at ETH Zurich. He gaduated in 2015 with a Ph.D. at the Chair for Information Systems Research (Prof. Dr. Dirk Neumann), University of Freiburg. During his research stays, he partnered with researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh. He has also been invited as a lecturer to teach in the Research Sprint at Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University.
Stefan Feuerriegel has co-authored 70+ journal articles and 80+ peer-reviewed conference papers. These works have appeared in top outlets from general science (e.g. Nature, PNAS), management (e.g Management Science, Marketing Science) and machine learning (e.g. NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, WWW, KDD, ACL, EMNLP, AAAI). According to Google Scholar, his works count 6500+ citations. Stefan currently serves as methodological expert for the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ). His group is supported by various companies (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, Amazon) and multiple grants, for which the funding volume totals to more than EUR 5.5 million. In particular, he received an SNSF Eccellenza Grant, which is the equivalent in Switzerland to the ERC Starting Grant.
Felix Hagemeister joined the SZ data science team in September 2022. After receiving his PhD in Economics from LMU Munich in 2021, he held positions at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Stanford University. Inspired by econometrics, his main focus is to leverage causal inference techniques, often married with machine learning strategies, to gain actionable insights and help drive the subscriber business of SZ.
Carmen Heger heads the ‘Data’ department at Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH (SZDM) and thus drives the data-supported development of SZ’s digital products. She studied computer science and has been working on problems related to machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science for over 15 years. Before SZDM, she worked as a machine learning developer on machine translation at eBay in California, among others. She has always been enthusiastic about language and technology, likes to try out new things and loves turning concepts fresh from research into products.
Annika Kiefner is head of AI at the Rheinische Post since July 2024. Since 2021, she has been building up RP Digital’s data science unit and, in her new role, is now also responsible for the development and implementation of the AI strategy
Koray is a Senior Data Engineer at Spotify, specializing in large-scale data processing for financial systems. With over ten years of experience, he has worked on massive scale data analytics and developed machine learning applications. Koray has been part of data teams in both startups and corporate environments, focusing on big data, cloud computing, and machine learning. Passionate about solving complex problems, he leverages his expertise in data engineering and advanced analytics to drive innovation.
Goran is a Cognitive and Data Scientist: everything from experimental behavioural methods, survey methodology, and online information retrieval from massive user/machine interactions to Big Data and Machine Learning systems in production. Domains of expertise: Decision Theory (Choice under Risk and Uncertainty), Categorisation, and Causality. He is an author who co-edited and co-authored five books on online behaviour and user attitudes, several journal papers and conference proceedings in cognitive science, a blogger, and a keynote speaker. He holds a Phd in Psychology (2013) and is a programmer since the mid-80s, with more than 20 years of experience in mathematical modelling.
Goran has provided full-stack Data Science and Big Data services for Wikidata – certainly the largest and arguably the world’s most complex Open Knowledge Base, 2017 – 2022. In his professional and academic career – as well as a volunteer – he has educated hundreds in Data Science, Statistics, and Machine Learning. In Smartocto he manages the LABS and Data Engineering teams, who together run our ML/AI projects for predictive analytics in digital media, develop recommendation systems for editorial analytics and strategic insights, and generative AI supported analytics and content enhancement systems.
Dr Ana Moya was Head of Data Science & Analytics at the Handelsblatt Media Group between 2022 and 2024, after having spent twelve years at Funke media group where she had several positions, working on the development of data and text mining algorithms, user research and the application of statistical and advanced AI models, until becoming Funke’s Director Data Science & Marketing Analytics. Currently she is Honorary Professor at the International School of Management (IMS), where she mainly works on Master-Programm (M. Sc.) “Business Intelligence & Data Science“ and supervises Master-Thesis and PhD-Thesis. Parallelly she works as Data Science and Green AI Researcher at the Infomotion, a Data Performance Company.
Kate is the Chief Data Officer for The Financial Times, responsible for their Data Strategy and for creating value from their data asset. Kate has been at the FT since April 2023 and leads their Data Governance, Data Science & AI, Analytics, Research and BI disciplines. With 25+ years’ experience across leading consumer-facing organisations within retail, travel and media, Kate has a passion for driving commercial value through using data to understand and influence customer behaviours.
As Manager Machine Learning & Applied Research at Thomson Reuters, Claudia Schulz has a proven track record of developing innovative AI solutions to tackle complex business challenges and drive business success. She has worked with professionals in law, medicine, education, and news and has a wealth of interdisciplinary expertise in solving professionals’ pain points through AI. Claudia’s journey in AI began with her undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science and a Masters degree in AI at Imperial College London, where she also earned her PhD. Claudia has been recognized throughout her career with numerous awards for academic excellence, professional dedication, and outstanding teaching. Claudia is passionate about empowering professionals by enhancing their workflows with cutting-edge AI technologies.
Justin Stile is a Data Science Consultant and founder of Coda Analytics. He is the former Vice President of Analytics – Engagement and Audience at The New York Times, where he worked for nine years from 2013 to 2019. Prior to the NYT, Justin worked as Director of Analytics at Ogilvy and had different roles as Marketing Analyst at Accenture Interactive. He is a graduate of the University in
Fabian joined the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s data team in 2018 as a Data Analyst. He moved to a Data Science position in 2020 before being appointed Senior Data Scientist in 2022. Since 2025, he has been Lead Data Science at F.A.Z.. Fabian has a M.Sc. degree in Marketing & Applied Statistics from the University of Göttingen and the Université de Liège, Belgium. Fabian is a Fraunhofer Certified Data Scientist Advanced Level, Specialized in Data Analytics and Specialized in Deep Learning and Generative AI.
