CV

Joel Niklaus

PDFs: [CV] and [Resume]

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• joel (at) niklaus (dot) ai
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• @joelniklaus
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"The secret of getting ahead is getting started." – Mark Twain

I am passionate about driving innovation in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Education

• PhD Student in Computer Science - University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Jul. 2020 ‑ Jan. 2024

  NRP 77 “Open Justice vs. Privacy”
  Supervisors: PD Dr. Matthias Stürmer, Prof. Dr. Paolo Favaro, Prof. Dr. Thomas Myrach, Dr. Ilias Chalkidis
  Thesis: Decoding Legalese Without Borders: Multilingual Evaluation of Language Models on Long Legal Texts
  Supervision of Bachelor and Master theses

• Master of Science in Computer Science – insigni cum laude - University of Bern, Neuchâtel and Fribourg, Bern, Switzerland Sep. 2018 ‑ Dec. 2019

  Major 90: Computer Science with a specialization in Data Science (Grade average: 5.50/6)
  Minor 30: Sports Science (Grade average: 4.96/6) and various additional courses
  Exchange Semester at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Spring 2019) (Grade average: 6/6)
  Thesis: JassTheRipper – A High‑Human Artificial Intelligence for the Swiss Card Game Jass ( Grade: 6/6)

• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science – magna cum laude - University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Sep. 2013 ‑ Jun. 2018

  Major 90: Computer Science (Grade average: 5.41/6)
  Minor 60: Sports Science (Grade average: 5.09/6)
  Minor 30: Mathematics
  Extracurricular Minor 15: Business Administration
  Exchange Semester at University of Exeter, England (Spring 2017) (Grade average: 5/6)
  Thesis: Machine Learning for Indoor Positioning (Grade 6/6)

• Swiss Matura - Kantonsschule Rychenberg Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland Aug. 2007 ‑ Jul. 2013

  Bilingual (German and English) with a focus on ancient languages (Greek & Latin) (Grade average: 4.96/6)
  Thesis: ScholarCoach.ch – Das Internetportal für Nachhilfevermittlung (Grade 6/6)

Experience

RESEARCH

• Research Scientist - San Francisco, USA Sep. 2024 ‑ present
  

  HARVEY
  Developing and evaluating LLM systems in the legal domain

• Postdoc - Bern, Switzerland Feb. 2024 ‑ Aug. 2024
  

  UNIVERSITY OF BERN
  Wrapping up projects and presenting papers at academic conferences

• PhD Resident - Mountain View, USA Aug. 2023 ‑ Nov. 2023
  

  GOOGLE X
  Legal Reasoning with Large Language Models

• Data Science Intern - Zug, Switzerland Mar. 2022 ‑ Aug. 2022
  

  THOMSON REUTERS LABS
  Improving Transformers for Long Document Processing

• Junior Researcher - Fribourg, Switzerland Mar. 2020 ‑ Aug. 2020
  

  UNIVERSITY OF FRIBOURG
  Loss Landscape Visualization of Neural Networks: https://github.com/JoelNiklaus/loss-landscape
  Historical Document Analysis with Deep Learning

• Data Scientist - Bern, Switzerland Mar. 2020 ‑ Sep. 2020
  

  ARTORG CENTER FOR BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING RESEARCH
  Maintenance and extension of tele‑health applications
  Development of cognitive models from existing data
  Development of algorithms for dynamic difficulty adjustments for tele‑apps
  Analysis and presentation of complex datasets

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

• Independent Software Developer - Bern, Switzerland Aug. 2012 ‑ present
  

  JOELNIKLAUS.CH
  Successful implementation of various orders for customers https://joelniklaus.ch
  Selected customers: University of Bern, University for senior citizens Bern, Claire & George, Freies Gymnasium Bern, KS Rychenberg

• Web Developer - Bern, Switzerland Sep. 2017 ‑ Jun. 2018
  

  FASTFORWARD WEBSOLUTIONS GMBH
  User interface development with Aurelia for a calculator of supplementary services (old age insurance) for Pro‑Senectute Switzerland (https://prosenectute.ch/de/dienstleistungen/beratung/finanzen/el-rechner.html)

TEACHING

• Lecturer for Software Engineering - Bern, Switzerland Aug. 2021 ‑ Jul. 2023
  

  BERN UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES
  I planned and conducted the technical part of the module Software Engineering (Code Management, DevOps, Web Technologies, etc.)

• Lecturer for Natural Language Processing Seminar - Bern, Switzerland Aug. 2021 ‑ Jul. 2022
  

  UNIVERSITY OF BERN
  I lead, planned and executed the entire Seminar (20 BSc/MSc students in total). I supervised various individual and group projects.

• High School Teacher for Computer Science & Robotics - Bern, Switzerland Aug. 2019 ‑ Jul. 2020
  

  FREIES GYMNASIUM BERN
  I assembled the coursework material for the brand-new course computer science as the first teacher; I conducted difficult conversations with parents and students.

• High School Teacher for Information and Communication Technology - Winterthur, Switzerland Feb. 2016 ‑ Aug. 2020
  

  KANTONSSCHULE RYCHENBERG WINTERTHUR
  Already during bachelors I started teaching students in applied computer skills; I supervised various Matura theses

• Teaching Assistant for “Programming Languages” (MSc), “Software Engineering” (BSc) and “Computer Networks” (BSc) - Bern, Switzerland Sep. 2015 ‑ Jun. 2021
  

  UNIVERSITY OF BERN
  Supervision of students
  Organisation and execution of practice hours
  Composition and Correction of lab assignments and exams
  

Awards

Projects