Issue 1 | 2025

HITS kicked off the new year with a change in the scientific leadership. Since January 2025, physicist and computer scientist Kai Polsterer has taken over the position of Scientific Director. The new Deputy Scientific Director is the biophysicist Rebecca Wade.

With Victoria Stodden, the Computational Statistics (CST) group has welcomed a renowned Humboldt Award winner to HITS. The statistician and associate professor at the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California, USA, is recognized internationally as a leading expert on reproducibility in computer and data science.

Scientists at HITS have developed a new model for the design of protein backbones based on machine learning: Geometric Algebra Flow Matching (GAFL). It enables the efficient design of protein structures and serves as a basis for further models to investigate advantages for various protein-related tasks.

In the final section, Klaus Tschira Guest Professor Guillermo Cabrera-Vives talks about his time at HITS so far. During his stay, he took part in several events, gave a talk on astronomy and machine learning and exchanged ideas with international researchers. He was particularly impressed by the working atmosphere at the institute and the forward-thinking mindset of the scientists.