Sometimes, people ask me for a biography. This is an unavoidable fact of life for an academic. Here, then, are some biographies for you to pick from.

Professional but boring

Bastian Rieck, M.Sc., Ph.D. is a Full Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the Principal Investigator of the AIDOS Lab, focusing on topology-driven machine learning methods in machine learning. Dr. Rieck is also a member of ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. Moreover, Dr. Rieck serves as the director of AATRN, the Applied Algebraic Topology Research Network. He received his M.Sc. degree in mathematics, as well as his Ph.D. in computer science, from Heidelberg University in Germany. Dr. Rieck’s research interests comprise developing geometrical deep learning and topology-driven machine learning algorithms, with a specific focus on applications in healthcare and biomedicine.

Professional but slightly whimsical

Bastian Rieck, M.Sc., Ph.D. is a Full Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the Principal Investigator of the AIDOS Lab, focusing on topology-driven machine learning methods in machine learning. Bastian is also a member of ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. Wearing yet another hat, he serves as the co-director of the Applied Algebraic Topology Research Network. Bastian received his M.Sc. degree in mathematics, as well as his Ph.D. in computer science, from Heidelberg University in Germany. He is a big proponent of scientific outreach and enjoys blogging about his research, academia in general, and software development.

Too whimsical

(You might entitle this ‘Bastian Rieck: Topological Troubadour’)

Living in a small town where entertainment consisted of staring at the walls for prolong periods of time, Bastian was destined for weird things. From an early age, little Bastian exhibited an uncanny ability to see patterns in everything, including his cabbage soup (a local delicacy), a skill that would later serve him well in science.

Soon, Bastian follows his own monomyth and studied the dark arts of topology at Heidelberg University. One day, sipping his coffee—always filtered, nothing fancy—an idea hit him: ‘Why not combine my love for shapes with my knack for making computers do my bidding?’ Thus, his research agenda was born, or at least got a substantial boost.

The fates proved kindly and led Bastian to create his own lab, the AIDOS Lab, a place ‘where data goes to find its true shape.’ Soon, word of his potential reached others and the legend was born. They say Bastian once debugged code so complex, it caused a minor earthquake in the lab due to the sheer force of his logical reasoning.

Again, fortune smiled upon Bastian and took him to a new role of Full Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Fribourg. Here, he’s rumoured to teach his classes while juggling toruses. His students adore him, not just for his knowledge, but for his ability to make the most abstract concepts seem as tangible—and tasty—as a Swiss cheese.

In his downtime, Bastian is fond of pondering the mysteries of the universe, often while hiking through the Swiss Alps with his family, where he mutters something about Morse functions that probably might make sense if anyone would listen. He’s also an avid collector of oddly-shaped stones, which he, to the confusion and doubt of others, insists are ‘for science.’

Bastian Rieck, the man who turned the world of data into a playground of shapes, continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in machine learning, one topological twist at a time.