The Fellows of the SSC SSC Fellows
Aurelia Ayala Usma is a transgender, non-binary PhD student in the Schindler Research Group at the Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH) at Universität Heidelberg, where they develop software solutions for the design and assembly of synthetic genomes. They hold a Master’s degree in Computational Biology from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), where they conducted research in comparative and population genomics of oomycete plant pathogens. Their broader research experience spans paleobotany, environmental molecular microbiology, genomics, and synthetic biology.
Aurelia also brings six years of experience in data science and analytics within the technology industry, having worked at established software companies including Twilio and Unity. Their industry experience includes building business intelligence and analytics platforms, developing cloud-based machine learning applications and APIs, and applying statistical modeling to support product research and data-driven decision-making.
Claus Sarnighausen is a PhD student at the Institute for Environmental Physics. He is implementing a new representation of dust aerosol into a German global climate model (ICON-XPP). Dust aerosol concentrations have increased since 1850, with potential effects for regional climate and society. Those effects need to be better constrained with the latest observational data, which is fed into the dust representation. The SSC mentorship will support Claus in the development of high-quality, future-proof software that will be published open access.
Kindie Fentahun Muchie is a Biostatistician serving as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine, Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, Heidelberg University Hospital. He holds a PhD in Statistics, an MSc in Biostatistics, and a BSc in Statistics. As an SSC fellow, he will leverage his expertise in R development and pipeline automation to enhance research efficiency and uphold the SSC’s mission of promoting reproducible and high-quality scientific software. During his SSC fellowship, he intends to develop scalable and reproducible open-source toolkits—including Shiny applications—following software engineering standards. These toolkits empower researchers with limited coding experience to perform analytical tasks independently.
M. Paola Vaccaro is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at Heidelberg University. Her research focuses on the formation of merging black-hole binaries in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), which are exceptionally bright galactic centres powered by supermassive black holes surrounded by dense disks of gas. These gaseous environments can bring smaller black holes together, facilitate repeated mergers, and potentially produce some of the most massive black-hole binaries observed through gravitational waves. Paola studies these processes using numerical and semi-analytical simulations, aiming to connect theoretical models of black-hole formation with current and future gravitational-wave observations. Her work also explores the multimessenger potential of these systems, investigating how gravitational-wave detections can be combined with electromagnetic observations of their possible host galaxies and AGNs.
A central part of her work involves developing simulation software to model the evolution of black holes in AGN disks. Through the SSC Fellowship, she aims to improve the structure, performance, and documentation of this code, making it more reliable and easier to maintain and use in future research projects.
Purusharth Saxena is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University, working at the intersection of Computational Biology and applied Mathematics. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics; and a Master's degree in Scientific Computing.
His current research is foccused on application of stochastic methods, optimal transport, and Bayesian inference to study dynamical systems from population-level data, with a particular focus on gene regulatory networks. A major component of this project is the development of a modular package for the proposed mathematical model, designed to facilitate future extensions and improvements. During the fellowship, he aims to develop a well-structured software framework that can evolve alongside the research and support continued scientific progress.
Previous SSC fellows
2025/2026
- Dr. Niklas Baumgarten, Institute for Mathematics
- Anamaria Elek, Centre for Molecular Biology (ZMBH)
- Dr. Maximilian Friedrich, Department of Ophthalmology of University Hospital Heidelberg
- Luca Monari, Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH)
- Stanley Scott, Institute of Environmental Physics
2024/2025
- Dr. Chris Byrohl, Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
- Solène Gerwann, sport psychology
- Stefan Maurer, Center for Molecular Biology
- Anna Lena Schaible, AstroAI Lab
