KIT International Excellence Fellow: Dr. Julian Katzke joins IPS

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Julian Katzke, recipient of a KIT International Excellence Fellowship, for a three-month research stay at IPS. He completed an MSc in Geosciences at the University of Bonn, followed by a PhD in Evolutionary Biology at the Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology (OIST), where his dissertation explored the link between morphology, biomechanics, and evolutionary diversification in ants. He has developed advanced image-based approaches to study morphological evolution using X-ray microtomography, geometric morphometrics, and machine-learning pipelines. His achievements have been recognized with the Peter Buck Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution and the Snodgrass Memorial Award of the Entomological Society of America.

Our collaboration with Julian Katzke began through the ANTSCAN initiative (www.antscan.info), which has s become a flagship project for tomographic biodiversity research at KIT. Beyond ANTSCAN, he contributed to additional KIT projects we just jointly launched ANTSCAN II this summer. During his three-month stay, he will develop scalable tomographic data-processing and trait-analysis workflows that enhance automated imaging at KIT, enable deep-learning-based integrative biodiversity research, and support broader applications in both life and materials sciences.