Curriculum Vitae

An animated version of my curriculum vitae

Overview

Tom Sander

Research Scientist & Ph.D. Student · TU Dortmund University

Dortmund, Germany German flag

German nationality Licence B — Car Licence BE — Car + Trailer

Email

GitHub

Discord

Instagram

Languages

All languages, that I speak / are learning

German

Mother Language

English

Highly Proficient

Chinese

A1 Level / Duolingo Score: 32

Profile

A calm and innovative young scientist with a good academic record and a passion for continuous learning and professional development

Machine Learning Engineer with deep expertise in deploying scalable multimodal foundation models and computer vision architectures for complex geospatial data. Highly skilled in PyTorch and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), with a proven history of optimizing Transformer models (1.3B+ tokens) and orchestrating robust cloud training pipelines. Adept at translating cutting-edge academic research into high-performance, production-ready systems.

Experience

Timeline of my education & work experience

Education 08/2006 – 07/2013 Soest, Germany

Secondary School

Hansa Realschule

I developed a keen interest in technology, choosing it as a compulsory elective, and actively participated in events like Gedankenblitz — a school competition challenging teams to solve technical problems. These experiences shaped my passion for engineering and built strong teamwork and critical-thinking skills.

Work 08/2013 – 08/2014

Internship

Legrand · Soest, Germany

Gained hands-on experience in electrical engineering and industrial processes at a major manufacturer of electrical infrastructure products.

Education 08/2013 – 08/2015

Specialised A-Levels

Börde Berufskolleg · Soest, Germany

Completed a technically focused A-level qualification providing the foundation for university study in engineering and applied sciences.

Education 10/2015 – 03/2019 Paderborn, Germany

Bachelor of Science

Paderborn University · Electrical Engineering

Studied electrical engineering with a focus on digital systems, signal processing, and embedded systems. Developed the technical depth that became the foundation for research in image processing and machine learning. Thesis topic: automated defect detection for wood surfaces.

Education 04/2019 – 04/2022

Master of Science

Paderborn University · Paderborn, Germany

Specialised in computer vision and machine learning. Thesis focused on deep-learning-based automated classification of natural wood surface defects.

Work 05/2018 – 06/2022

Research Assistant

Fraunhofer ENAS · Paderborn, Germany

Applied ML and image processing to real-world industrial inspection problems alongside university studies. Built automated defect detection pipelines for natural material sorting.

Research Present 07/2022 – present Dortmund, Germany

Researcher & Ph.D. Student

TU Dortmund University · Image Analysis Group

Conducting research on multimodal machine learning applied to planetary science — specifically lunar surface analysis. Work spans anomaly detection via multimodal correlation, large-scale transformer architectures, and integration of diverse remote sensing data sources. Resulting in multiple peer-reviewed publications.

Research 06/2024 – 08/2024 Mountain View, United States

FDL Researcher

SETI Institute · Frontier Development Lab

Selected for the prestigious NASA-backed Frontier Development Lab (FDL) programme at the SETI Institute in Silicon Valley. Collaborated with an international team of researchers and industry partners to tackle a challenging AI problem in space science over an intensive 8-week sprint.

Secondary
School A-Levels &
Internship Bachelor
Degree Master's &
Fraunhofer TU
Dortmund FDL /
SETI

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Hobbies

What I do besides working...

Bouldering

Physical and mental problem-solving: Strength, flexibility, and the satisfaction of cracking a new route.

Wakeboarding

Summer on the water: Learning new tricks, hitting kickers, and pushing limits one session at a time.

Reading

Sci-fi and popular science in English: Both entertaining and a great way to keep growing intellectually.

Electronics

Tinkering with circuits, microcontrollers and DIY builds, where engineering curiosity meets hands-on making.

References

A selection of my published papers.

Looking for the full archive?

Visit the Papers page for all publications, abstracts, and links.

View all

The Moon's Many Faces: A Single Unified Transformer for Multimodal Lunar Reconstruction

2026 Dortmund, Germany

Authors

Tom Sander Moritz Tenthoff Kay Wohlfarth Christian Wöhler

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing DOI

Lunar Image Transformation: A Multi-Modal Any-To-Any Generation Approach

2025 Houston, Texas, US

Authors

Tom Sander Christian Wöhler

56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2025 (LPSC) LPSC 2025 Website

Lunar Technosignatures: A Deep Learning Approach to Detecting Apollo Landing Sites on the Lunar Surface

2025 Porto, Portugal

Authors

Tom Sander Christian Wöhler

20th International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (VISAPP) Published Feb 2025

Localization and Classification of Defects on Natural Wood Surfaces

2024 Bristol, England

Authors

Tom Sander Christian Wöhler

25th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT) 10.1109/ICIT58233.2024.10540767