Projects

Professionally, I consult on quantitatively and technologically demanding projects. In the past, these were allocated in banking, insurance, pharma and energy. For some time now, I have a special focus on applied machine learning, in particular MLOps and natural language processing (NLP). In my free time, I read as much as possible, preferably about programming or math-related topics. To get the most out of each book, I often compile notes and try solving as many exercises as I can. Some of these I provide below. Currently, I am preparing also for cloud and Kubernetes certifications.

Human languages. I am a German native speaker and speak fluently English and Italian. Particularly in the latter I took a lasting interest and prepared diligently for the CELI language certificate. In June 2022, I was able to sit and clear the CELI 3 (B2) exam in Italian with 78% overall score. I might sit for the CELI 4 (C1) exam at some point in the future depending on whether or not I will stay in Italy for an extended amount of time.

Programming languages. In the past, coding in R generally took up a good part of my day, both for work and in my spare time. Then I kept myself busy with Java backend programming, including Spring, flyway, lombok, JUnit and Mockito. In terms of database, there is mostly Oracle with SQL. Besides Java, I dabbled in Angular frontend development and JS more general. For machine learning projects, I work with Python and R, e.g. on AWS Sagemaker. A tremendous topic right now, MLOps and cloud native deployment with Kubernetes is something that keeps me busy at the weekends also.

Computer genealogy. Some years ago I became invested in genealogical research. I use $\LaTeX$ and the brillant genealogytree package to maintain a genealogical tree for my family that by now spans more than 150 ancestors and goes back to 1612. Originally, I am of part Westprussian (i.e. Polish) and part German descent. The meaning of the name Kopischke is not entirely clear: it might stem from the Polish word kupiec, spoken [kupjetsch], which means merchant. Another possibility, following Rymut, Kazimierz/Hoffmann, Johannes (2006): Lexikon der Familiennamen polnischer Herkunft im Ruhrgebiet. Band 1. Krakow. p. 357, is the root kopiec, spoken [kopjetsch], with the meaning hill or mound. Hence, Kopischke would describe someone who lives in or comes from a hilly area. Besides my own family, I never met another person with my surname.