The Presidential Board of Leibniz University Hannover awarded a total of 24 students with the “Leibniz Talents” prize on November 8, 2022. The award annually honors outstanding students with above-average grades and student groups with innovative initiatives.

One of the recipients is Marcel Jahnke, who wrote his master’s thesis “Efficient Dual-Encoder Models for Neural Retrieval and Ranking” at the L3S Research Center. The dissertation is in the area of machine learning, specifically deep learning, and focuses on developing more efficient text retrieval systems based on neural networks – large language models – in a dual-encoder network architecture.

“I am honored to have been awarded the “Leibniz Talents” prize by the Presidential Board of Leibniz Universität Hannover, the Leibniz Universitätsgesellschaft Hannover e.V. and the Christian Kuhlemann Foundation for my master thesis at the L3S Research Center. I would like to thank the jury for recognizing my work.

Special thanks to Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Nejdl and Dr. Marco Fisichella for giving me the opportunity to write this thesis and to Jurek Leonhardt for the excellent guidance.”

In her address, Julia Gillen particularly emphasized the fact that numerous papers distinguished themselves beyond the top grade by being innovative in terms of content or methodology and contributed to addressing the current challenges of our time. “It is fascinating to see that many bachelor’s and master’s theses address essential questions of their subject and work on them with particular interest and a clear spirit of research. Sustainability topics are particularly in the focus of these bright young minds. Here they are the creators of the future!” said the vice president.

The L3S sincerely congratulates all recipients on this special award and their outstanding achievements and wishes all students every success and motivation in their further studies.