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 degree in Management of Organizations and Mathematical Modelling from Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University (Ukraine). She 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. Alona is also 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. 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, 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 €80,000 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
Digital twins
Energy-efficiency in buildings
Demand-side mitigation
International Research Stays
University of Oxford (UK) - scheduled 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
Third-party funding and Grants
Individual Strategic Partnership Grant for two research stays at the University of Oxford, UK, "Demand-side climate change mitigation: Potential of residential energy storage", by the DFG through the Strategic Partnerships Program of the Excellence (5000 €), 2025
Grant "Open Humboldt Freiräume" for funding a 6-month research sabbatical, "Demand-Side Climate Change Mitigation: Citizen-Centered Solutions for Climate-Friendly Energy Consumption Behavior"(~35000 €), funded by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) within the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments, 2025
Transfer project “Platform for Promoting Energy Efficiency and CO₂ Reduction in Private Households” funded by the Joachim Herz Stiftung (80000€), 2025
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", by the DFG through the Strategic Partnerships Program of the Excellence (2500 €), 2025
Add-on Fellowship 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”, (15500 €), 2023 – 2025
Participating Researcher at the Scientific Network Programme “Management AI”, funded by the DFG (36900 € in total), 2024 - 2026
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 DFG through the Strategic Partnerships Program of the Excellence (6000 €), 2023
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) (4400 €), 2023
Co-PI at the project “AI for Energy Finance”, funded by the European Union through the Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (ca. 1.4 Mio. € in total), 2023 - 2026
Co-PI at the project “AI Marketer”, funded by the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB), Program for promoting Research, Innovations and Technologies (ProFIT), (296530 € in total), 2021 - 2023
Co-PI at the HU Berlin - National University Singapore (NUS) Joint Research Project in “Augmented Intelligence in Digital Society”, funded by the National University Singapore (NUS) (16500 € in total), 2018 - 2020
Individual grant of Erasmus Mundus BMU-MID for 6 months exchange mobility at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (9000 €), 2013 - 2014
Teaching
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
Business Analytics and Data Science (Exercise, ca. 150 students/ 90 exams); WiSe20-21
Seminar IT Security and Privacy (40 students); SoSe23
Research Seminar Information Systems (Ph.D. & selected MSc theses); WiSe23-24, WiSe22-23, SoSe21, WiSe20-21, SoSe20
Service
Refereeing activities
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
Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop within NeurIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems), 2024 & 2023, Reviewer & Meta-Reviewer
Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop within ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations), 2025, 2024, 2023, Reviewer
International Journal of Forecasting, Reviewer
Further Engagements
Expert advisor of the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) Management office, support with Data Analyses for the application for BUA prolongation to the DFG, 2024 - 2025
Member of the ProFiL-Program (Professionalisierung für Frauen in Forschung und Lehre: Mentoring – Training – Networking), since 2023
Expert of the Deutsche Klima-Konsortium e.V. (DKK), since 2020
Expert advisor of the Vice President for Research and Research Service Centre of the HU Berlin, 2016 - 2019
Volunteer support for Ukrainian refuge researchers in Berlin, since 2022
Advisor to several StartUps, since 2021
Selected conferences
ICLR 2023 Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop: Activity-Based Recommendations for the Reduction of CO2 Emissions in Private Households (with Löschmann L) https://iclr.cc/virtual/2023/13480
NeurIPS 2022 Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop: Explainable Multi-Agent Recommendation System for Energy-Efficient Decision Support in Smart Homes (with Boer A, Knoblauch J, Schewina KI, Vihs J) https://neurips.cc/virtual/2022/59278
NUS Workshop on Research Metrics (2019), National University Singapore, Singapore (SG), Is Scientific Performance a Function of Funds?
Singapore Economic Review Conference 2019 (SERC), Singapore (SG): Emergence of Trends in Economics
International Conference on Econometrics and Statistics (EcoSta 2017), Hong Kong (CN): A multivariate dynamic analysis of third-party funds
Selected publications
Papers in peer-reviewed journals
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, 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
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
Papers in peer-reviewed conferences / Proceedings
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
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”.
Working Papers / Preprints
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
