Tanja Munz-Körner


Science meets Art

  Personal Profile

I am a highly motivated, determined, and reliable individual with multiple years of experience in software development and research. Driven by a strong interest in science and technology, I enjoy developing and implementing innovative solutions to complex problems. I am creative, understand things quickly and enjoy trying out and learning new approaches. With a strong background in visualization, visual analytics, machine learning (especially explainable AI, deep learning, natural language processing (NMT), and dimensionality reduction), eye tracking, 3D technologies, and teaching, my career path has been characterized by a combination of scientific experiences and practical software development.

  Experience

08/2017 – today

PhD student  

Visualization Research Center of the University of Stuttgart (VISUS),

Cluster of Excellence Data-integrated Simulation Science (SimTech)

  • Topic: Visual Analysis of Sequential Data
  • Design and development of visual analytics systems (Python, JavaScript/HTML/CSS, C++/Qt) in interdisciplinary research teams
  • Evaluation through user studies and quantitative analyses
  • Publications in leading journals and at international conferences (including Computers & Graphics, IEEE VIS) and presentations at conferences

08/2017 – 08/2024

Research assistant  

Visualization Research Center of the University of Stuttgart (VISUS)

  • Research: Same topics as those I covered in my research as a doctoral student (see above)
  • Teaching: Supervision of student (final) theses; assistance in courses (seminars, exercises accompanying lectures)

05/2022 – 08/2024

Parental leave

  • 02/2023 – 08/2024: Continued working as a research assistant on a part-time basis (16-24 hours/week)
  • 05/2022 – 02/2023: Maternity/parental leave (continued supervision of student theses and worked on a scientific paper)

06/2019 – 10/2021

Conducting courses  

TGZ Software & Systems Engineering der TTI GmbH

  • Assistance in providing courses for Bosch employees (Algorithms & Data Structures, programming language C)
  • Preparation of teaching material and preparation/conducting of exercises/exams

08/2016 – 07/2017

Software and pipeline developer  

LUXX Studios

  • Development and maintenance of internal applications for film production (C# with WPF, Python with wxPython/PySide, ffmpeg)

09/2015 – 07/2016

Personal projects, e.g.,

  • Portfolio website (HTML, CSS, Python, Jinja)
  • Data processing for a SIGGRAPH paper draft (C++, Qt, OpenGL)

09/2014 – 09/2015

Master's in Computer Animation and Visual Effects  

Bournemouth University, UK

  • Degree: MSc Computer Animation and Visual Effects (Grade: with Distinction)
  • Master's Thesis: Curvature-Adaptive Remeshing with Feature Preservation of Manifold Triangle Meshes with Boundary (Grade: with Distinction)
  • Simulation, animation, and rendering projects (C++ with Qt and OpenGL, Houdini, Maya, and RenderMan)

04/2014 – 08/2014

Preparation for studying abroad

  • Improved English skills and successfully passed the IELTS test (International English Language Testing System) for admission to study abroad

10/2007 – 03/2014

Diploma in Computer Science  

University of Stuttgart

  • Degree: Diplom-Informatik (Grade: very good)
  • Diploma Thesis: Visualisierung von dynamischen Software-Entwicklerzahlen in Arbeitsbereichen (Grade: 1.0)
  • Specialization: Visualization and Interactive Systems, Distributed Systems
  • Minor: Electrical Engineering
  • The results of my diploma thesis and special project are published in scientific journals

08/2013 – 01/2014

Student research assistant  

Visualization Research Center of the University of Stuttgart (VISUS)

  • Implementation of a dynamic graph visualization tool (C++ with Qt; Python)
  • Project published at IVAPP

09/1998 – 06/2007

Abitur  

Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium, Fellbach

  • Specialized courses: Physics, Chemistry
  • Degree: Abitur/A-Levels (Grade: 2.0)

  Technical Skills

Programming Languages

Highly proficient: Python (scikit-learn, Flask), JavaScript (D3.js) mit HTML/CSS , C++ (Qt)
Additional knowledge: C++ (OpenGL), C# (WPF), C, Java, Ada, Bash/Shell, RenderMan (RSL, RIB), ActionScript

Tools & Technoeslogi

Version control: Git, SVN
Development environments: PyCharm, Visual Studio, Qt Creator, Jupyter Notebook
Operating systems: Linux, Microsoft Windows

Research & Methods

Machine Learning & AI: Explainable AI (XAI), Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Neural Machine Translation (NMT), Visual Question Answering (VQA), Text Classification, Dimensionality Reduction
Visualization & UX: Visual Analytics, Information Visualization, 3D Visualization, GUI Development, Data Analysis, Multidimensional Data
Research & Teaching: Scientific Work, Peer-Reviewed Publications, Conference Presentations, Teaching Activities

  Languages

German: Native speaker
English: Fluent
French: Basic knowledge