DSSGx Munich 2026
Organizing Team

Anna Fuchs has an academic background in statistics and data science. As DSSG project Co-Lead and Project Manager she will be responsible for the project management in the fellow projects.

Jan Simson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Statistics, LMU Munich. For DSSGx Munich 2026, he is the project's Co-Lead and Technical Mentor responsible for guiding the final solution's design, supporting the fellows during development, and providing technical feedback.

Wiebke Weber is Scientific Manager at the Chair for Statistics and Data Science in Social Sciences and the Humanities (SoDa) at LMU Munich and Research Fellow at the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM) of Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain.

Christoph Kern is Junior Professor of Social Data Science and Statistical Learning at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and Project Director at the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES). 

Frauke Kreuter holds the Chair of Statistics and Data Science at LMU Munich, Germany and at the University of Maryland, USA, she is Co-director of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa) and faculty member in the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM). 

Bernd Bischl holds the chair of Statistical Learning and Data Science at the Department of Statistics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich and is a co-director of the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), one of Germany’s national competence centers for ML.

Professor Jochen Gensichen is Director and Chair of the Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine at LMU University Hospital Munich and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. His research focuses on primary care, mental health, multimorbidity, prevention, and health services research, with a strong emphasis on collaborative and data-informed approaches to patient care. Drawing on an interdisciplinary background in medicine, educational sciences, and public health, he has contributed to innovative, evidence-based models of care and to research collaborations across Germany and beyond. As a project partner of DSSGx Munich 2026, he brings the perspective of primary care research and innovation at the interface of medicine, data, and society.

Susanne holds diplomas in Public Health and Psychology from LMU Munich and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in medical research. As a member of the POKAL Graduate School, she conducts a randomized controlled trial on the treatment of depression in primary care at the LMU Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine.

Her earlier career includes research positions at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, the LMU Munich Psychiatric Hospital and the Bavarian Academy for Addiction and Health, where she contributed to large-scale epidemiological studies on mental disorders with a focus on depression. She also served as General Manager of Munich’s Health Advisory Council in the City of Munich’s Department of Health.

Maria Panagioti is a Professor of Health Services and Mental Health at the University of Manchester, where she leads the Mental Health Research Theme and serves as the Divisional Lead for Social Responsibility. She is an expert advisor on patient safety for the World Health Organization and acts as the UK Principal Investigator for major NIHR-funded global health research programs. Her work primarily focuses on improving quality of care, patient safety, and workforce wellbeing within primary care and mental health services.