Getting Artificial Intelligence on the Road Faster
Marta Stala is working on platforms for the development and integration of generative artificial intelligence. Her work is helping develop even faster ZF products that are laying the foundation for the autonomous driving. The physicist is enthusiastic about the numerous opportunities that open up for her as a FutureStarter at ZF.
When Marta Stala looks back on her education and career, she concludes that she always did the unexpected. As a high school student, she never wanted to be an engineer. However, curiosity about how the world works led her to study biomedical engineering at Poland’s Częstochowa University of Technology in the fall of 2014. “The scientific method of analyzing relationships and looking for solutions to problems still accompanies me today in my job as a Project & Program Manager for AI,” she says. Inspired by the natural sciences, she wanted to understand the natural world exactly, at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles: quantum mechanics was the focus of her Master’s degree. To avoid losing her perspective when dealing with theoretical physics, she also started training to be an optician at the same time.
Expert in quantum mechanics: For Marta Stala, AI is the top game in the industry.
“There was no better way to get to know the whole company and its diversity.”
Marta was able to cope with the challenge of two parallel programs of study — but her curiosity was by no means satisfied. Already while working on her Master's thesis, she got to know ZF through an internship at the Częstochowa site and, after completing her studies and optician training, was immediately offered a job in IT risk management of the corporation. Her main task here: standardizing the emergency management of the Group’s more than one hundred data centers. “I never intended to do that, but after a hard and intensive training period, I spent five years intensively working on IT risk management. There was probably no better way to get to know the whole company and its diversity,” says Marta, describing her impressions of hundreds of contacts with colleagues from all over the world. Her most formative experience: “At my first business meeting in Friedrichshafen, I felt in a very real way — also from the exhibits in the ZF Forum — the tradition and engineering expertise in the various industries behind the ZF name,” she says. “When you come from a local site, like the Częstochowa IT Center in my case, it’s overwhelming.”
AI is the top game in the industry
Marta Stala has been responsible for quantum computing and generative artificial intelligence at ZF IT Innovation since the end of 2022. “This was the first obvious step in my career,” she says. “My current job is in many ways the logical outcome of the years I spent learning how a corporation works and applying my theoretical, basic knowledge of physics for our technologies.” The challenge is a great one: to stay ahead in the global race to apply artificial intelligence – for example with self-driving cars. “AI is the industry’s Champions League,” Marta says, summarizing her view. “If our customers know that we are fast, have the necessary know-how for artificial intelligence and massive amounts of data — and that we build the appropriate platforms and processes — we will be among the winners in the mobility of the future, for example, in technologies related to autonomous driving.” In the future, also end customers will benefit from artificial intelligence and Marta’s team’s findings: “Future security systems will thanks to AI not only recognize dangerous situations and react to them with the right decisions. The artificial intelligence will even be able to predict these situations and prevent dangers from arising in the first place.” What’s special about generative AI is that it not only uses data analysis to make predictions, but also that it is able to generate new knowledge and new data from existing data.
Room for creativity
Marta is enthusiastic about ZF as a corporation because working at ZF means she can realize her potential, and not just in a professional sense. For example, the 28-year-old works exclusively from home: “This benefits my work-life balance. I’m part of a global team and can communicate with my supervisor in China or the other colleagues, none of whom are based at the Częstochowa site, from anywhere and at almost any time.” She uses the flexibility of her work hours to pursue her passions.
Headdress from the 3D printer: cosplay costumes are the physicist's hobby. Photo: projektcosplay
After intensive training in the fall of 2022, for example, she qualified for the Berlin Marathon and crossed the finish line after running 42.195 kilometers as a member of ZF “Team One.” She is equally as engaged and successful in her second hobby, designing and tailoring cosplay costumes, which are clothes that are made to look as true as possible to the originals worn by manga, anime, movie or video game characters. She won a prize with her Padmé Amidala outfit. She designed the elaborate headdress herself on her computer and made it using a 3D printer. Because she has room in her schedule for her passions and interests, Marta Stala has found the right balance for herself: “I have the opportunity to be in the driver’s seat with our AI platforms, shaping the mobility of tomorrow. Being a FutureStarter at ZF is an enormously satisfying and enjoyable experience.”
