Alona is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Information Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She earned her Ph.D. in Statistics and Econometrics from the School of Business and Economics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and holds a Bachelor's and Master’s degrees in Management of Organizations and Mathematical Modelling from Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University (Ukraine). Alona is an expert scientist at the German Climate Consortium (Deutsches Klima Konsortium) and an Add-On Fellow of the Joachim Herz Stiftung in Interdisciplinary Economics and Interdisciplinary Business Administration. She is a Visiting Researcher at the University of Oxford, Environmental Change Institute. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Australian National University and the National University Singapore. Alona has extensive experience in research coordination, having managed a Collaborative Research Center (CRC) and an International Research Training Group at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), for several years.
Her research focuses on AI-driven forecasting and optimization, design and development of recommendation systems, multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, and complex data visualization. She applies these methodologies to data-driven decision support, demand-side climate change mitigation, human behavior change, electricity load management in households, and smart home and smart city solutions.
Currently, Alona is leading a transfer project on Electricity Load Management for Demand-Side Climate Change Mitigation, for which she has been awarded a Transfer Fellowship (2025) from the Joachim Herz Stiftung. The project's web-based platform is built on the initial-stage results (link to webpage), with further developments underway. It provides daily recommendations to German households on shifting electricity consumption to reduce CO₂ emissions.
Research areas
Methods
Recommendation systems
Multi-agent systems
Explainable AI
Reinforcement learning
Data-Centric AI
Active learning
Data quality evaluation
Cross-domain data quality metrics
Decision-making Support
Complex data visualization techniques
Collaboration networks
Research performance evaluation
Managerial and policy-making decision support
Climate Change Mitigation
Load Management
Smart Home and Smart City
Human behavior change (social, spatial and temporal dimensions)
Energy-efficiency in buildings
Demand-side mitigation
International Research Stays
University of Oxford (UK) - April & June 2025
Australian National University (Australia) - February-March 2025
National University Singapore (Singapore) - January 2025
Universidad de La Habana (Cuba) - 2023
Australian National University (Australia) - 2023
National University Singapore (Singapore) - 2018
Awards
Individual Strategic Partnership Grant for two Research stays at the University of Oxford, UK, "Demand-side climate change mitigation: Potential of residential energy storage", funded by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) within the Strategic Partnerships Program of the Excellence, 2025 (5000 €)
Individual Grant from Funding Program “Open Humboldt Freiräume” for a 6-month Research sabbatical in summer semester 2025, "Demand-Side Climate Change Mitigation: Citizen-Centered Solutions for Climate-Friendly Energy Consumption Behavior", funded by the BUA within the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments, 2025 (~35000 €)
Individual Global Partnership Grant for co-funding of a Research stay at the Australian National University (ANU), "Recommendation Systems for nudging households in Germany and Australia towards energy-efficient behavior to reduce CO₂ emissions", funded by the BUA within the Strategic Partnerships Program of the Excellence, 2025 (2500 €)
Add-on Fellow of the Joachim Herz Stiftung in Interdisciplinary Economics and Interdisciplinary Business Administration, “Field Study: Nudging Energy-Efficient Behavior in Private Households Through the Application of Explainable Multi-Agent Recommendation Systems”, 2023 – 2025 (15500 €)
Individual International Connections Grant for a Research stay at the Australian National University (ANU), "Nudging Energy-Efficient Behavior in Private Households through the Recommendation Systems", funded by the BUA through the Strategic Partnerships Program of the Excellence, 2023 (6000 €)
Individual Grant for a Research stay at the Universidad de La Habana, Kuba (UH), "Sustainable Economic Development and Recommendations Systems supporting Energy-Efficiency in Private Households", funded by the DAAD through the Berlin Center for Global Engagement (BCGE), 2023 (4400 €)
Individual Grant of Erasmus Mundus BMU-MID for 6 months exchange mobility at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2013 - 2014 (9000 €)
Third-party Funds Projects
Transfer project “Platform for Promoting Energy Efficiency and CO₂ Reduction in Private Households” funded by the Joachim Herz Stiftung, 2025 (80000 € in total; role - sole applicant)
Interdisciplinary Center “GreenCompute – Center for Saving Energy in Large-Scale Data Analysis and HPC” together with Ulf Leser (HU) and the colleagues funded by the Research Service Center of the HU (ca. 0.5 Mio. € in total; role - participating researcher)
Scientific Network “Management AI: AI algorithms for decision-making in businesses and organizations” together with Stefan Feuerriegel (LMU) and the colleagues funded by the DFG (ca. 37000 € in total; role – participating researcher)
Research project “AI for Energy Finance” together with Stefan Lessmann (HU) funded by the European Union through the Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (ca. 1.4 Mio. € in total; role – co-PI)
Research project “AI Marketer” together with Stefan Lessmann (HU) funded by the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB), funded by the Program for promoting Research, Innovations and Technologies (ProFIT), (ca. 300000 € in total; role – co-PI)
Joint research project HU-NUS in “Augmented Intelligence in Digital Society” together with Ying Chen (NUS) and Stefan Lessmann (HU) funded by the National University Singapore (NUS) (16500 € in total; role – co-PI)
Further Third-party Funds Experience
Coordination of the application for prolongation of the International Research Training Group (IRTG) 1792 “High Dimensional Nonstationary Time Series” to the DFG (successful; approval for 4.5 years 2018-2022, 3.4 Mio. € in total)
Coordination of the application for a Collaborative Research Center (CRC) “Digital Economy and Decision Analytics” to the DFG (decision “C”)
Teaching Experience
B.Sc.
Strategie, Organisation und Information Technology (Lecture & Exercise, ca. 400 students); SoSe23
Introduction to Programming in Java (Lecture & Exercise, ca. 200 students); SoSe24, SoSe23, SoSe21, SoSe20, SoSe18 (Exercises available in YouTube, Link)
Management Simulation (Simulation Game, 35 students), International Summer School in Economics and Management (ISSEM) of the HU Berlin in Havana, Cuba; SoSe19, SoSe17, SoSe16, SoSe15
Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning (Lecture), International Summer School in Economics and Management (ISSEM) of the HU Berlin in Havana, Cuba; SoSe23
Ph.D.
Research Seminar Information Systems (Ph.D. & selected MSc theses); WiSe23-24, WiSe22-23, SoSe21, WiSe20-21, SoSe20
Service
Committee work at HU
Member of the Joint Commission for the Master program in Information Systems at the HU, since 2020
Representative of the group of research associates at the Faculty Council(Fakultätsrat) of the School of Business and Economics, HU, 2018 – 2020
Member of Search committees (Berufungskomissionen): three junior professorships (W1) and two full professorships (W3) at the HU, 2017 - 2024
Scientific Member of 12 PhD committees, since 2018
Further Engagements
Expert in the Deutsche Klima-Konsortium e.V. (DKK), since 2020; jährliche Briefings mit Bundesaußenminister:in vor der UN-Klimakonferenz (COP)
Expert advisor of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) Management office, support with Data Analytics for the application for BUA prolongation to the DFG, 2024 - 2025
Collaborated in Dagstuhl Seminar „Leveraging AI for Management Decision-Making“ (Causality and AI, Responsibility and AI, Explainability and AI), organized by Stefan Feuerriegel, Foster Provost, and Galit Shmueli, 2024
Awarded support under the ProFiL Program (Professionalisierung für Frauen in Forschung und Lehre: Mentoring – Training – Networking) as an outstanding early-career researcher, BUA, 2023 - 2025
Expert advisor of the Vice President for Research and Research Service Centre of the HU Berlin, Data Analytics, 2016 - 2019
Volunteer support for Ukrainian refuge researchers in Berlin, since 2022
Advisor to several StartUps, since 2021
Member of the scientific Advisory Board of the first German-Cuban business incubator InCUBA.uhhu, joint project by Universidad de la Habana and HU, financed by the DAAD, since 2015
Supervisor of bachelor and master theses, since 2020
Career counseling for female students (BSc, MSc, and Ph.D.), since 2018
Refereeing activities
Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop within ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations), 2025, 2024, 2023, Reviewer
Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop within NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems), 2024 & 2023, Reviewer & Meta-Reviewer
Climate Change AI (CCAI) Innovation Grants Program 2024, Reviewer
Tagung WI (Internationale Tagung Wirtschaftsinformatik), 2025, 2024, Associate Editor and Reviewer
BISE (Business & Information Systems Engineering) journal, Reviewer
ECIS (European Conference on Information Systems), 2024, Reviewer
Journal of Business Analytics, Reviewer
International Journal of Forecasting, Reviewer
Memberships
GI, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.
Die WI, Die Wirtschaftsinformatik e.V.
VHB, Der Verband der Hochschullehrerinnen und Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft e.V.
DHV, Deutsche Hochschulverband
WWG, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin e.V.
ProFiL-Netzwerkverein e.V.
Publications
Peer-reviewed publications in journals
Zharova* A, Boer A, Knoblauch J, Schewina KI and Vihs J (2024). Explainable Multi-Agent Recommendation System for Energy-Efficient Decision Support in Smart Homes. Environmental Data Science, 2024, 3:e7. Code in GitHub. https://doi.org/10.1017/eds.2024.8
Riabchuk V, Hagel L, Germaine F and Zharova* A (2024) Utility-Based Context-Aware Multi-Agent Recommendation System for Energy Efficiency in Residential Buildings. Information Fusion, 112, 102559. Code in GitHub. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2024.102559
Zharova* A, Härdle WK, and Lessmann S (2023) Data-driven support for policy and decision-making in university research management: A case study from Germany. European Journal of Operational Research, 308(1), 353-368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2022.10.016 Quantlets in GitHub
Zharova* A, Tellinger-Rice J and Härdle WK (2018) How to measure the performance of a Collaborative Research Center. Scientometrics, 117(2), 1023–1040. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2910-8 Quantlets in GitHub
Book chapters
Aisbett E, Steinhauser R, and Zharova A (2024) International Green Economy Collaboration Networks: Pathway or Peril for SDG 13? In Beirne J, Ma S, Rahut DB & Suryadarma D (Eds.), Striving to Meet the Sustainable Development Goals: Next Steps for Policymakers and Practitioners , (pp. 273-286). ADBI Press. https://doi.org/10.56506/ACFH4829
Peer-reviewed publications in conferences
Zharova* A, Löschmann L, and Lessmann, S (2024) Optimizing Household Energy Use: An Activity-based Recommendation System for Reducing CO2 Emissions. Wirtschaftsinformatik 2024 Proceedings. 87. https://aisel.aisnet.org/wi2024/87
Zharova* A, Löschmann L, and Lessmann S (2023) Activity-Based Recommendations for Demand Response in Smart Sustainable Buildings. Research-In-Progress presented at the ICLR 2023 Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop (Link)
Zharova* A, Boer A, Knoblauch J, Schewina KI and Vihs J (2022). Explainable Multi-Agent Recommendation System for Energy-Efficient Decision Support in Smart Homes. Research-In-Progress presented at the NeurIPS 2022 Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop (Link)
Aisbett E, Steinhauser R, and Zharova A (2023) International Green Economy Collaboration Networks: Pathway or Peril for SDG 13? Asian Development Bank Institute’s 2023 Annual Conference “Sustainable Development Goals: Midway Assessment and the Road Ahead”.
Further conferences and workshops
Zharova* A, Härdle WK, Lessmann S (2019) Is Scientific Performance a Function of Funds? National University Singapore (NUS) Workshop on Research Metrics, Singapore
Zharova* A, Schirmer M (2019) Emergence of Trends in Economics, Singapore Economic Review Conference 2019 (SERC), Singapore
Zharova* A, Härdle WK, Lessmann S (2017) A multivariate dynamic analysis of third-party funds. International Conference on Econometrics and Statistics (EcoSta 2017), Hong Kong
Chaikovska M, Zharova A (2013) Methodological challenges of agent-dynamic modeling for IT project management, Research journal of ONEU "Economics, political science, history", Odessa, 23 (202), P.12-19. [In Russian]
Zharova* A (2013) Agent-dynamic approach for the enterprise management, In Proceedings of the IV international scientific conference information technology and modelling in economics, Cherkassy. P.76-77. [In Russian]
Working Papers / Preprints
Zharova* A and Creutzig F (2025) An Assessment of the CO2 Emission Reduction Potential of Residential Load Management in Developing and Developed Countries. arXiv Preprint. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.02811
Zharova* A and Lee HE (2022) Understanding User Perception and Intention to Use Smart Home for Energy Efficiency: A Survey. arXiv Preprint. Code in GitHub. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2212.05019
Zharova* A, Mihoci A and Härdle WK (2016). Academic ranking scales in economics: prediction and imputation, SFB 649 Discussion paper, (020)2016. Quantlets in GitHub
Books
Chaikovskaya M and Zharova A (2013) Modelling of enterprises’ activity, Odessa, Ukraine. ISBN 978-617-689-058-4. [In Ukrainian]
* - corresponding author
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Currently Under Review
Towards an integrated understanding of urban design, circularity and sustainability. Felix Creutzig, Mira Kopp, Peter Berrill, Harald Desing, Aneeque Javaid, Alessio Mastrucci, Nikola Milojevic-Dupont, Florian Nachtigall, Jakob Napiontek, Hauke Schlesier, Mafalda Silva, Dominik Wiedenhofer, Charlie Wilson, Alona Zharova. (Submitted to Nature Sustainability)
Beware of “Explanations” of AI. David Martens, Galit Shmueli*, Theodoros Evgeniou, Kevin Bauer, Christian Janiesch, Stefan Feuerriegel, Sebastian Gabel, Sofie Goethals, Travis Greene, Nadja Klein, Mathias Kraus, Niklas Kühl, Claudia Perlich, Wouter Verbeke, Alona Zharova, Patrick Zschech, and Foster Provost. (Submitted to Nature Computational Science)
