Congratulations to Dr. Sascha Korf on his successful defense!

 Throughout his time with HDS-LSS, he has been an engaged and supportive member of the community, helping to create the open, collaborative atmosphere that makes our network such a valuable place for scientific exchange.
In his dissertation, Sascha advanced the field of infectious disease modeling through the development and application of MEmilio-ABM, a data-driven agent-based model for infectious disease simulations with a particular focus on SARS-CoV-2. His research addresses important challenges including computational feasibility, the realistic implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions, and the impact of model initialization on epidemic predictions. The framework has been applied to retrospective analyses of COVID-19 testing and isolation strategies as well as to a novel systematic investigation of transmission-chain initialization bias.
As part of his defense, Sascha also presented an accessible overview of diffusion models for generative AI, explaining how neural networks and stochastic differential equations underpin today's state-of-the-art generative methods.
We are pleased that Sascha will continue his academic career as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn, where he will further develop agent-based infectious disease models, with a particular focus on post-acute infection syndromes (PAIS).
Congratulations once again, Sascha, and all the best for this next stage of your research career. We look forward to following your future work.