News & Awards

Empirical Inference News 06-03-2025 Neural network deciphers gravitational waves from merging neutron stars in a second Machine learning method could revolutionize multi-messenger astronomy Binary neutron star mergers emit gravitational waves followed by light. To fully exploit these observations and avoid missing key signals, speed is crucial. In a study to be published in Nature on March 5, 2025, an interdisciplinary team of researchers presents a novel machine learning method that can analyze gravitational waves emitted by neutron star collisions almost instantaneously – even before the merger is fully observed. A neural network processes the data and enables a fast search for visible light and other electromagnetic signals emitted during the collisions. This new method could be instrumental in preparing the field for the next generation of observatories. Maximilian Dax Bernhard Schölkopf Jakob Macke

Empirical Inference Award 14-12-2024 Zhijing Jin receives two Best Paper Awards at workshops at NeurIPS 2024: Pluralistic Alignment Workshop and Workshop on Causality and Large Models. Zhijing Jin

Empirical Inference Award 12-12-2024 Luigi Gresele won the ELLIS PhD Award 2024, for his thesis on identifiability in representation learning and causal inference. Luigi Gresele

Empirical Inference Award 22-10-2024 Annalena Kofler receives Best Poster Award at the 2nd Tübingen Women in Machine Learning workshop.

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-10-2024 Dieter Büchler is now Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. Furthermore he was nominated for the CIFAR AI chair and part of Amii. Dieter Büchler

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-10-2024 Michel Besserve is now Professor for Artificial Intelligence at the TU Braunschweig, Germany. Michel Besserve

Empirical Inference News 15-07-2024 Siyuan Guo wins 2024 MPI-IS Outstanding Female Doctoral Student Prize Rachael Bevill Burns, Marilyn Keller and Cansu Sancaktar receive honorable mentions Siyuan Guo Marilyn Keller Rachael Burns Cansu Sancaktar Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Bernhard Schölkopf Leila Masri Florian Hartmann Alona Shagan

Empirical Inference Appointment 15-07-2024 Zhijing Jin will become Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto

Empirical Inference Award 05-07-2024 Siyuan Guo: 2024 MPI-IS Outstanding Female Doctoral Student Prize

Empirical Inference Award 16-05-2024 Julius von Kügelgen won the Cambridge PhD Prize in Quantitative Research (administered by G-Research) Julius von Kügelgen

Empirical Inference Award 24-04-2024 Niki Kilbertus receives Leopoldina Prize for Young Scientists Niki Kilbertus

Empirical Inference Award 05-02-2024 Vincent Stimper receives G-Research PhD Prize.

Empirical Inference Award 16-01-2024 Zhijing Jin receives 3 Rising Star awards: EECS Rising Star, Rising Star in Data Science, and Rising Star in Machine Learning and invited to the 73. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.

Empirical Inference News 01-01-2024 Zhijing Jin receives three Rising Star Awards Ph.D. student Zhijing Jin receives the EECS Rising Star, Rising Star in Data Science, and Rising Star in Machine Learning award. Her research focuses on socially responsible NLP by causal inference. Zhijing Jin Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 16-11-2023 Amir-Hossein Karimi receives the ETH Silver Medal for his outstanding doctoral thesis "Advances in Algorithmic Recourse: Ensuring Causal Consistency, Fairness, & Robustness".

Learning and Dynamical Systems Embodied Vision Empirical Inference News 06-10-2023 Roboter entdecken die Welt Forschende vermitteln Robotern eine Art Körpergefühl Roboter können den Menschen heute bereits bei manchen alltäglichen Aufgaben unterstützen. Doch unbekannte Umgebungen oder auch kleine Abweichungen in den Aufgaben, auf die sie trainiert sind, überfordern sie. Damit sie rascher lernen, sich auf Neues einzustellen, entwickeln die Forschungsgruppen von Michael Mühlebach und Jörg Stückler am Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme in Tübingen neue Trainingsmethoden für die Maschinen. Ihre Roboter müssen sich dabei auch im Pingpong oder Bodyflying bewähren. Michael Muehlebach Jörg Stückler Dieter Büchler Hao Ma

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-09-2023 Amir-Hossein Karimi becomes Assistant Professor at University of Waterloo, Canada

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-09-2023 Majid Khadiv becomes Assistant Professor at TUM Munich

Empirical Inference Award 14-07-2023 Zhijing Jin receives Honorable Mention for the MPI-IS 2023 Outstanding Female Doctoral Student Prize.

Empirical Inference News 05-07-2023 Computer scientist Zeynep Akata Schulz receives the €1 million Alfried Krupp Prize 2023 The 37-year-old researcher specializes in machine learning at the University of Tübingen Zeynep Akata

Empirical Inference Award 03-07-2023 Zeynep Akata-Schulz received the prestigious Alfried Krupp Prize 2023

Empirical Inference Award 10-06-2023 Bernhard Schölkopf received the 2022 ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award for his groundbreaking research in the field of artificial intelligence.

Empirical Inference Award 01-06-2023 Majid Khadiv received the outstanding reviewer award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters for the year of 2022

Empirical Inference Award 23-05-2023 Bernhard Schölkopf elected Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain

Empirical Inference News 03-05-2023 Bernhard Schölkopf receives the 2022 ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award for his groundbreaking research in the field of artificial intelligence One of the world's most important prizes in the research field of AI goes for the first time to a scientist from the Max Planck Society, to Europe for the fourth time. Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference News 27-04-2023 Casting a safety net: a reliable machine learning approach for analyzing coalescing black holes Self-checking algorithm interprets gravitational-wave data An interdisciplinary team from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics has developed an algorithm that immediately checks its own calculations of merging black holes’ properties and corrects its result if necessary – inexpensively and rapidly. The machine learning method provides very accurate information about the observed gravitational waves and will be ready for use when the global network of gravitational-wave detectors starts its next observing run in May. Maximilian Dax Jonas Wildberger Jakob Macke Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 14-04-2023 Julius von Kügelgen: Best Paper Award, CLeaR Conference 2023

Empirical Inference Award 07-03-2023 Bernhard Schölkopf, Asteroid (53839) Schölkopf = 2000 EY 197

Empirical Inference Award 28-02-2023 Francesco Locatello (Alumnus) received the Hector-Foundation-Award 2023

Empirical Inference Award 03-12-2022 Hamza Keurti, Hsiao-Ru Pan, Michel Besserve, Benjamin Grewe, Bernhard Schölkopf: Best abstract award at the NeurReps workshop @ NeurIPS 2022 for the paper "Homomorphism AutoEncoder — Learning Group Structured Representations from Observed Transitions"

Empirical Inference News 18-10-2022 Bundeswettbewerb Künstliche Intelligenz zeichnet Schülerteams aus Deutschlands KI-Nachwuchs begeisterte beim Finale des führenden Wettbewerbs rund um Künstliche Intelligenz. Ziel aller Teilnehmenden: Mithilfe von KI-Anwendungen die Welt verbessern Bernhard Schölkopf Wieland Brendel

Empirical Inference Award 01-08-2022 Bernhard Schölkopf: Thomas Mann Honorary Fellowship 2022, Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V.

Empirical Inference Award 20-07-2022 Bernhard Schölkopf, Dominik Janzing (Alumnus), Jonas Peters (Alumnus), Eleni Sgouritsa (Alumna), Kun Zhang (Alumnus) and Joris Mooij: Test of Time Honorable Mention at ICML 2022 for their 2012 paper "On causal and anticausal learning".

Empirical Inference Award 16-06-2022 Annika Buchholz and Cedric Engels (Doktor Whatson), Fast Forward Science Award, 1st price in the category Tandem.

Empirical Inference Award 04-05-2022 Zhijing Jin, Future of Life Institute, Vitalik Buterin PhD Fellowship in AI Existential Safety

Empirical Inference Award 04-05-2022 Zhijing Jin, Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship

Empirical Inference News 02-05-2022 BLOG - Three Max-Planck Institutes join forces to develop a next generation contact tracing system A blog post by Heiner Kremer, Ph.D. student in the Empirical Inference Department at MPI-IS In a recent work published at Nature Scientific Reports, researchers from the Max-Planck Institutes for Intelligent Systems, Software Systems, and Security and Privacy as well as other institutions joined forces to devise PanCast, a novel privacy-preserving and inclusive system for epidemic risk assessment and notification. Heiner Kremer Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 29-04-2022 Annika Buchholz, 2nd price at the GeneDisco Challenge (presented at ICLR 2022)

Empirical Inference Award 22-03-2022 Julius von Kügelgen, Google Fellowship in Machine Learning

Empirical Inference Award 08-03-2022 Vincent Stimper, Award for the best Master's Degree in Physics 2019 from the Patrons Association for Physics at the TU Munich

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-02-2022 Georgios Arvanitidis changes as Assistant Professor to TU of Denmark

Empirical Inference News 08-12-2021 Machine Learning decodes Tremors of the Universe Neural network analyzes gravitational waves in real-time Researchers train a neural network to estimate – in just a few seconds – the precise characteristics of merging black holes based on their gravitational-wave emissions. The network determines the masses and spins of the black holes, where in the sky, at what angle, and how far away from Earth the merger took place. Bernhard Schölkopf Maximilian Dax Jakob Macke

Empirical Inference Award 19-11-2021 Francesco Locatello, ETH Medal for his PhD Thesis (2021)

Empirical Inference News 04-10-2021 Youtuber Doktor Whatson und MPI-IS erklären gemeinsam KI Video-Serie über Künstliche Intelligenz gestartet Folge 1 beschäftigt sich mit Generativen Modellen, Folge 2 mit Kausalität, Folge 3 mit Fairness und Folge 4, die wir vor Ort in Tübingen gedreht haben, mit Reinforcement Learning. Annika Buchholz Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 27-09-2021 Karimi, Amir-Hossein: received the Google PhD Fellowship in Machine Learning 2021

Empirical Inference Award 21-09-2021 Bernhard Schölkopf received the 2020 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award. Due to the pandemic, the award ceremony was postponed to September 2021.

Empirical Inference News 20-09-2021 Bernhard Schölkopf receives Frontiers of Knowledge Award At an award ceremony in Bilbao, the BBVA Foundation recognizes Schölkopf for his work that has advanced the field of artificial intelligence by teaching machines the human skill of classifying data. Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-09-2021 Stefan Bauer becomes Assistant Professor at KTH, Sweden

Empirical Inference Award 16-07-2021 Georgios Arvanitidis, best Student Paper Award, at Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS), 2021, for the paper: "Learning Riemannian Manifolds for Geodesic Motion Skills", by Hadi Beik-Mohammadi, Søren Hauberg, Georgios Arvanitidis, Gerhard Neumann, Leonel Rozo

Empirical Inference Award 01-07-2021 Gary Becigneul: Dieter-Rampacher-Prize 2020