Axel Sauer
Co-Founder at Black Forest Labs
Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAxel Sauer is a machine learning researcher and entrepreneur with eight years of experience bridging academic research and industry productization, currently co-founding Black Forest Labs after research roles at Stability AI, NVIDIA, and Max Planck. He holds a PhD-level research trajectory from the University of Tübingen and has a background in mechanical engineering from KIT, which gives him a rare blend of systems thinking and deep learning expertise. His open-source contributions include engineering on the high-profile StyleGAN-XL project, where he integrated pre-trained embeddings and streamlined training and sampling workflows—signaling strength in model engineering and transfer learning. Comfortable in both paper-driven research environments and fast-paced AI product teams, he focuses on making large generative models more usable and reproducible. Based in Germany, Axel brings applied curiosity and a penchant for practical tooling that accelerates ML experimentation.
8 years of coding experience
6 years of employment as a software developer
Ph.D., Computer Science, Ph.D., Computer Science at University of TübingenMaster of Science, Mechanical Engineering, Master of Science, Mechanical Engineering at Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
French, English, German
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (10)
computer-vision10
pytorch10
custom-configuration10
machine-learning10
transfer-learning10
configurations10
system-configuration10
yml-configuration10
pre-trained-model10
deep-learning9
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
autonomousvision/stylegan-xl
Mar 2022 - Jun 2022
[SIGGRAPH'22] StyleGAN-XL: Scaling StyleGAN to Large Diverse Datasets
Role in this project:
ML Engineer
ML EngineerContributions:49 commits, 3 PRs, 42 pushes in 2 months
Contributions summary:Axel primarily contributed to the project by updating and modifying the `pretrained_builder.py` file, suggesting a focus on integrating and adapting pre-trained models, likely for feature extraction or transfer learning within the StyleGAN-XL framework. Further contributions include adding pre-trained embeddings, suggesting a specialization in model architectures and configurations. Moreover, the user optimized the training script and added code for generating sample sheets, thus enhancing the model's functionality.
pytorchdiversestylegansiggraphgenerative-models
autonomousvision/counterfactual_generative_networks
Jan 2021 - May 2021
Contributions:6 commits, 5 pushes, 1 branch in 3 months
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