News & Awards

Empirical Inference News 19-06-2017 The Machine Learning Summer School 2017 is back in Tübingen! For the fifth time, the MLSS takes place in Tübingen

Empirical Inference News 01-02-2017 How Can We Use Machine Learning in the Search for Exoplanets? Bernhard Schölkopf joined the initiative "Latest Thinking" Exoplanets are planets beyond our own solar system. Since they do not emit much light and moreover are very close to their parent stars they are difficult to detect directly. When searching for exoplanets, astronomers use telescopes to monitor the brightness of the parent star under investigation: Changes in brightness can point to a passing planet that obstructs part of the star’s surface. The recorded signal, however, contains not only the physical signal of the star but also systematic errors caused by the instrument. As Bernhard Schölkopf explains in this video, this noise can be removed by comparing the signal of the star of interest to those of a large number of other stars. Commonalities in their signals might be due to confounding effects of the instrument. Using machine learning, these observations can be used to train a system to predict the errors and correct the light curves. Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 17-10-2016 Moritz Grosse-Wentrup, Vinay Jayaram: IEEE Brain Initiative Best Paper Award at the IEEE SMC 6th Workshop on Brain-Machine Interface Systems, at the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Annual Conference in Budapest.

Empirical Inference News 08-10-2016 The Paralympics are over - the Cybathlon starts! CYBATHLON Championship for Athletes with Disabilities Zürich. On October 8, 2016, a collaboration of the research group "Brain-Computer-Interfaces" at the MPI-IS and the "Autonomous Systems Lab" at the TU Darmstadt will send a joint team into the Brain-computer-Interface Race at the Cybathlon 2016 in Zurich. The so called Athena-Minerva team consists mainly of computer science students of bachelor and master-level at the Technical University Darmstadt. They are interested in "Machine Learning", signal processing and especially for Brain-Computer-Interfaces (BCI). The team is headed by Moritz Grosse-Wentrup from MPI-IS and by Jan Peters, TU Darmstadt. The pilot is Sebastian Reul. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup

Empirical Inference Award 17-08-2016 Daniel, C.; van Hoof, H.; Neumann, G..; Peters, Jan: Best Student Paper Award of ECML-PKDD 2016 for their paper: "Probabilistic Inference for Determining Options in Reinforcement Learning".

Empirical Inference News 18-07-2016 Bernhard Schölkopf has been elected member of the "Leopoldina" Leopoldina - National Academy of Sciences Founded in 1652, the Leopoldina is one of the oldest academies of science in the world. It is dedicated to the advancement of science for the benefit of humankind and to the goal of shaping a better future. With some 1,500 members, the Leopoldina brings together outstanding scientists from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and many other countries. Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference News 11-07-2016 Matthias Hohmann in portrait #thatsmyscience Matthias Hohmann, PhD Student Max Placnk Institute For Intelligent Sysytems, IMPRS for cognitice and systems neuroscience Matthias Hohmann

Empirical Inference Award 13-06-2016 Jonas Peters: elected New Member of the German "Young Academy".

Empirical Inference News 13-06-2016 Jonas Peters New Member of the German "Young Academy" Young, excellent and motivated - Jonas Peters has been elected as one of ten new members to the "Junge Akademie" and will contribute to the interdisciplinary work of this organization. Congratulations! Jonas Peters

Empirical Inference Award 30-04-2016 Bernhard Schölkopf: has been elected member of the Leopoldina (German National Academy of Science).

Empirical Inference Award 12-12-2015 Ruth Urner: Best Paper Award at NIPS 2015 Workshop on "Transfer and Multitask Learning: Trends and New Perspectives" for Ruth Urner (and co-author Shai Ben-David).

Empirical Inference News 12-12-2015 Best Paper Award @ NIPS Workshop 2015 for Ruth Urner at the NIPS 2015 Workshop on "Transfer and Multitask Learning: Trends and New Perspectives". Ruth Urner

Empirical Inference Award 09-12-2015 Jakob Zscheischler: Köppen Award 2015, awarded by the Cluster of Excellence CliSAP, for his doctoral dissertation submitted at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) in 2014.

Empirical Inference News 09-12-2015 Köppen Award 2015 for Machine Learning in Climate Research Excellent doctoral dissertation Dr. Jakob Zscheischler is to receive this year’s Wladimir Peter Köppen Award. The Cluster of Excellence CliSAP selected the mathematician for his excellent doctoral dissertation submitted at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) in 2014. His work was rated trendsetting by the jurors who found its thematic and methodical approach particularly original. Jakob Zscheischler completed his dissertation in Germany at the German Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. Jakob Zscheischler

Empirical Inference News 03-11-2015 One of the best science videos of the year! 2nd prize at the "Fast Forward Science 2015" Competition The movie "Light gets on your nerves" was financed and coordinated by the Max Planck Society and pictures the research of the Brain-Computer-Interfaces group at our institute. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup Bernhard Schölkopf Tatiana Fomina Sebastian Weichwald Timm Meyer

Empirical Inference Award 28-10-2015 Leonardo Casarsa: Second prize, "T3 Award - Thesis in 3" - category Master students. Title of the presentation: "Can computers treat sick brains?"

Empirical Inference Award 28-10-2015 Vinay Jayaram: Second prize, "T3 Award - Thesis in 3" - category PhD students. Title of the presentation: "Why can't we control computers with our minds yet?"

Empirical Inference News 13-07-2015 Tübingen is for two weeks the linchpin of the Machine Learning World MLSS 2015 Tübingen The 4th MLSS at Tübingen welcomes more than 110 participants, bringing together 35 nationalities from 19 different countries. Michael Hirsch Philipp Hennig Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 06-07-2015 Matej Balog: Winner of Code Hunt programming contest at Microsoft Research PhD Summer School 2015.

Empirical Inference News 18-06-2015 Machine Learning for climate research Jakob Zscheischler receives Otto Hahn Medal for his PhD thesis "A global analysis of extreme events and consequences for the terrestrial carbon cycle". Jakob Zscheischler

Empirical Inference Award 18-06-2015 Jakob Zscheischler: Otto-Hahn-Medal for his PhD Thesis "A global analysis of extreme events and consequences for the terrestrial carbon cycle", written at the MPI for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen and the MPI for Biogeochemistry, Jena.

Empirical Inference Award 06-05-2015 Katharina Muelling: Award for Extraordinary Scientific Achievement for her Ph.D. thesis by the "Freunde der TU Darmstadt".

Empirical Inference News 16-04-2015 Precise Imprecision Probabilistic Numerical Methods assign Uncertainty to Deterministic Computations With a new approach, Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems aim to make numerical algorithms more efficient. During the next five years, this research project will be supported by the Emmy-Noether-Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) with nearly a million Euros. The applicant Dr. Philipp Hennig prevailed in a competitive process. With the start of two new PhD students in April this Emmy Noether Group takes up its research activities. Philipp Hennig

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2015 Jan Peters : ERC Starting Grant (2015-2020) for Research on Movements of Humanoid Robotics (Project: SKILLS4ROBOTS)

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2015 Oliver Kroemer : Runner Up, 2015 Georges Giralt Award (Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award)

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2015 Philipp Hennig: Emmy-Noether-Program "Probabilistic Numerics - Probabilistic Programming for Autonomous Systems"

Empirical Inference News 27-11-2014 2014 Milner Award Lecture - Statistical and causal approaches to machine learning In machine learning, we use data to automatically find dependences in the world, with the goal of predicting future observations. Most machine learning methods build on statistics, but one can also try to go beyond this, assaying causal structures underlying statistical dependences. The hope is that this also allows prediction in certain situations where systems change, for instance by interventions. Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference News 01-09-2014 Teaching Awards for Moritz Grosse-Wentrup and Daniel Braun Winter and Summer Term 2013 / 14 at Graduate School of Neural Information Processing / University of Tübingen The senior master students present this years teaching awards to Dr. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup (group leader Brain-Computer-Interface group) and Dr. Daniel Braun (group leader Sensorimotor Learning & Decision Making group). Congratulations! Moritz Grosse-Wentrup

Empirical Inference Award 01-07-2014 Carl-Johann Simon-Gabriel: Google European Doctorate Fellowship 2014-2016

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 Bernhard Schölkopf: Royal Society Milner Award 2014

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 Moritz Grosse-Wentrup and Daniel Braun: Teaching Award Winter & Summer Term 2013/14 at Graduate School of Neural Information Processing, University of Tübingen

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 A. Abdolmaleki (Universidade de Aveiro), N. Lau (Universidade de Aveiro), G. Neumann(TU Darmstadt), J. Peters, 1st Place at the 3D Free Challenge of the RoboCup 2014.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 M. Deisenroth (TU Darmstadt), P. Englert (Uni Stuttgart), J. Peters, D. Fox (U. Washington), IROS Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 O. Kroemer (TU Darmstadt), H. van Hoof (TU Darmstadt), G. Neumann(TU Darmstadt), J. Peters, IROS Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award Finalist

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 Sebastian Weichwald and Timm Meyer best student paper award at the 4th International Workshop on Cognitive Information Processing (CIP 2014) for the paper: Decoding Index Finger Position From EEG Using Random Forests published with Bernhard Schölkopf, Tonio Ball, and Moritz Grosse-Wentrup.

Empirical Inference News 01-12-2013 NIPS 2013 outstanding paper award Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez, Department Empirical Inference (Prof. Schölkopf), received an outstanding paper award at NIPS 2013. Manuel Gomez Rodriguez

Empirical Inference News 29-10-2013 2013 Young Investigator Award der International Neural Networks Society für Prof. Jan Peters Preis für entscheidende Beiträge im Bereich der Neuronalen Netzwerke Tübingen. Prof. Ph.D. Jan Peters, Leiter des „Robot-Learning-Labs“ am MPI für Intelligente Systeme, ist mit dem 2013 Young Investigator Award der International Neural Network Society ausgezeichnet worden. Peters hat den Preis erhalten für seine entscheidenden Beiträge im Bereich der Neuronalen Netzwerke, insbesondere zur Entwicklung neuer Lernmethoden, die es Robotern erlauben, neue Fähigkeiten zur Bewegung zu lernen. Jan Peters

Empirical Inference News 22-01-2013 IEEE RAS Early Career Award for Prof. Jan Peters Prestigious Award in Robotics Research for Scientist of the MPI for Intelligent Systems Jan Peters, head of the Robotics Learning Laboratory at the Tübingen site of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and since 2011 Professor of Intelligent Autonomous Systems at the Technical University of Darmstadt, receives the IEEE RAS Early Career Award for his contributions to robot learning. Jan Peters

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2013 Jan Peters: Early Career Award of the IEEE Roboticsand Automation Society in 2013.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2013 Jan Peters: Young Investigator Award of the International Neural Networks Society (INNS) in 2013.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2013 Jens Kober: Georges Giralt Award as the Best European Robotics PhD Thesis for his PhD Thesis "Learning Motor Skills: From Algorithms to Robot Experiments", supervised by Jan Peters.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2013 Jonas Peters: ETH Silver Medal for his PhD thesis "Restricted Structural Equation Models for Causal Inference".

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2013 Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez: outstanding paper award at NIPS 2013 for the paper: "Scalable Influence Estimation in Continuous-Time Diffusion Networks" in December 2013

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2013 Thomas Schultz: MRM Distinguished Reviewer Award.

Empirical Inference News 27-06-2012 Tübingen scientist honored for excellent research Bernhard Schölkopf receives the Academy Award 2012 of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy. Detailed information in the German press release. Bernhard Schölkopf

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2012 Bernhard Schölkopf: Academy Prize 2012 of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2012 Jan Peters: Frontiers of Artificial Intelligence speaker at European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) in 2012.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2012 Jan Peters: Early Career Spotlight of the conference Robotics: Science & Systems (R:SS) in 2012.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2012 Stefan Harmeling: Günter Petzow Prize of the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2012 Ulrike von Luxburg: Heisenberg Professorship (September 2012)