Photo of Tobias Christian Nauen
// portrait.jpg 2026 · KL
phd student · efficient deep learning

Tobias Christian Nauen.

phd_student @ dfki · rptu_kaiserslautern-landau

I’m a researcher of artificial intelligence at DFKI and RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau. My research interests include efficient deep learning, transformer models, multimodal learning, and computer vision. In my PhD project, my focus lies on the development of efficient transformer models for vision, language, and multimodal tasks.

role
PhD Student
advisor
Andreas Dengel
location
Kaiserslautern, DE
interests
Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Efficient Transformer Models
education
M.Sc. in Mathematics, Hannover '2022→ experience

Recent news

Research areas

04 — active threads
01
Efficient transformers
Smaller, faster attention — pruning, distillation, architectural priors.
02
Multimodal learning
Vision–language alignment as a training-time signal for unimodal models.
03
Data efficiency
Coreset selection, dataset distillation, synthetic-data evaluation.
04
Green AI
Sustainable ML — energy-aware training and embedded deployment.

Featured publications

2026
2026 Preprint

TextTeacher: What Can Language Teach About Images?

Tobias Christian Nauen, Stanislav Frolov, Brian Bernhard Moser, Federico Raue, Ahmed Anwar, Andreas Dengel

 figure

We use a frozen text encoder on image captions as a lightweight training-time auxiliary objective for image classifiers. The text components are drop.p.ed at inference, leaving a fast, unimodal vision model. Accuracy on ImageNet improves by up to +2.7 p.p. and downstream transfer by +1.0 p.p. on average, outperforming vision knowledge distillation at a fraction of the compute.

Software & tools

1 projects
AI Deadlines Tracker

AI Deadlines Tracker

An open-source tracker of AI and machine learning conference deadlines, featuring advanced filtering by rating, h5-index, and timeline. Designed to help researchers plan submissions efficiently across 90+ venues.

Research projects

3 active
Albatross

Albatross

At its core, Albatross is a research project in the area of continual learning.

SustAInML

SustAInML

SustainML is dedicated to creating a sustainable ML framework for Green AI. By prioritizing energy efficiency, SustainML aims to pave the way for environmentally conscious AI solutions that are both efficient and effective.

Get in touch

If you have any questions, want to collaborate, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out.

Office
Office 3.09
Trippstadter Str. 122
67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany