Year in Review 2024

31 December 2024 5 min read News
Image credit: starline on Freepik.

Inspired by the end-of-year reviews of Michael Ekstrand and Matt Kelly, I gave it a go for myself last year too.—And here is my end-of-year review for 2024.

Again, it has been a full year with many ups—yet, also downs.

My personal highlights

  • 2 times at Dagstuhl—spending the evenings in the music room with my beloved music-RecSys friends 🎶🙂
  • From my home country, I traveled for work to Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands. Particularly nice: 2 weeks in sunny Bari in autumn.
  • The collaboration with Andrés Ferraro on bias mitigation in music recommender systems is growing big. We have joined forces with Michael Ekstrand and Samira Vaez Barenji. Stay tuned! 💪
  • Giving a talk at the big stage of Teatro Petruzzelli was an incomparable experience for me. I mean, on a big (!) stage in a beautiful, venerable theater, full of people, even people sitting on the balconies of the theater!

Publications

  • 2 journal papers (TORS) (well, one of those was available online as “just accepted” in 2023 but officially published in 2024)
  • 1 editorial to a special issue (TORS)
  • 1 short conference paper (RecSys)
  • 1 proceedings (MuRS)
  • 1 Dagstuhl report
  • 3 event reports (PERSPECTIVES, INTROSPECTIVES, MuRS, CIKM PhD Symposium)
  • 1 invited article

Keynotes, talks, and panels

  • 1 keynotes: CRUM
  • 5 invited talks
  • 2x panelist: at Fachtagung für Urheberrecht 2024 and 30. DGRI-D-A-CH-Tagung

Award

  • For the TORS paper with Karin van Es and UU students, I received the Women in RecSys 2024 Journal Paper of the Year Award (“Senior”).

Teaching

  • Started teaching Intelligent Interfaces in the AI Bachelor program of PLUS
  • Started teaching Recommender Systems at PLUS (open to all students of PLUS and MOZ; finally, all participants were on PhD level! 🙂)
  • Was teaching Contextual Interaction Design (with Chris Frauenberger) in a combined course with Contextual Analysis & Context Capturing (with Verena Fuchsberger-Staufer) in the HCI Master program
  • Started teaching AI Support for Supplementary Tasks in the Music and Art Sectors with Sebastian Gawron in the inter-university program of PLUS and MOZ
  • Session on Fantastic Reviews at the RecSys 2024 Summer School with Olivier Jeunen
  • Session on How to write reviews at ESSIR 2024
  • Guest lecture at the Department of Business at PLUS

Advising and supervising PhD researchers

  • I am the secondary supervisor of Daniele Pretolesi (AIT), who will graduate soon (fingers crossed!).
  • While (still) not officially acting in a (co-)promotor role, I keep working with Anouk van Kasteren (UU).
  • I keep serving as the co-promotor of Marloes Vredenborg (UU).

Service & organization

  • Since October, I am a Co-Lead of the focus area “InterMediation. Music—Effect—Analysis” at the inter-university institution Wissenschaft & Kunst, together with Martin Losert; two sax🎷 players as leads; it can only be great 😉
  • Independent Ethics Advisor of the EU project OpenMusE
  • Member of the Equal Opportunities Working Group (AKG) at PLUS
  • Member of the Member of the Curriculum Committee for the Joint Master’s Degree Program in Human-Computer Interaction at PLUS and FHS
  • WP Lead for WP2 (Third-Party Funding) of EXDIGIT
  • Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of EXDIGIT
  • Jury member of the Marie Andeßner Prizes for Master and Diploma theses 2024 and the Marie Andeßner PhD Grants 2024
  • WiMIR mentoring 2024
  • Co-Chairing:
    • Workshop Co-Organizer of INTROSPECTIVES 2024 at RecSys 2024, with Alan Said and Eva Zangerle
    • Workshop Co-Organizer of MuRS 2024 at RecSys 2024, with Andrés Ferraro, Lorenzo Porcaro, and Peter Knees
    • Dagstuhl Seminar Co-Organizer with Alan Said and Eva Zangerle
    • Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop Co-Organizer with Li Chen, Nicola Ferro, and Norbert Fuhr
  • Editorial Boards:
    • Ongoing service on the Editorial Board of TOIS
    • Ongoing service on the Editorial Board of TORS
    • Joined the Editorial Board of JITT
  • Member of PhD Defense committees:
  • Opponent of PhD dispositions at PLUS:
  • (Meta-)Reviewing:
    • Meta-Reviewing activities for the 2024 conferences RecSys, SIGIR, and CIKM
    • Reviewing activities for the 2024 conferences ECAI, FAccT, ECIR, IUI, NORMalize, and MuC
    • Reviewing activities for the journals TOCHI and TiiS
    • 1 international research proposal review

Third mission / outreach / media

  • Organization of the W&K Forum Symposium 2024: Harmony & Dissonance: Generative AI in Music and the Arts
  • I have been introduced to the Let’s empower Austria (LEA) initiative as a LEA Role Model.
  • 2x panelist at Forum Kultur organized by Austria’s Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES)
  • On stage at the “DAS ist EXDIGIT” press conference as part of EXDIGIT
  • Member of the Advisory Board for the Incubation programs FACTORY and FACTORY+ at Innovation Salzburg
  • Jury member of aws Preseed | Seedfinancing—Innovative Solutions
  • 13 media mentions:
    • 1 radio interview in Mahlzeit Burgenland, ORF Burgenland
    • 3 feature articles: appeared in DIE PRESSE, Salzburger Nachrichten, and TECHNO-Zine
    • 9 short media mentions

Building a team

  • Glenda Hannibal joined as a postdoctoral researcher.
  • A PhD position is still open—we are in the selection process.

Other happiness

  • Attended Salzburger Festspiele for the first time.
  • I enjoyed the theater play Luziwuzi with Tom Neuwirth in the leading role.—It was so good, I’ll see it again in 2025.
  • Dirty Loops is pretty cool as a live band!
  • Martijn C. Willemsen and I performed a song for Lien Michiels’ defense, for which we created lyrics aligned to her thesis 🎶

The downsides

  • I’m still not settled in Salzburg musically.—I hope to find a band to actively engage in playing music again. I miss it!
  • I’ve had a very hard time bearing up against a detrimental campaign… 😔

Wrap up

  • I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a thing or two or three.
  • I want to thank those who supported and encouraged me to uphold integrity and move forward.
  • I made it through the year, and that’s the most important achievement!
Reflection End-of-Year Reflection Year in Review