News & Awards

Empirical Inference News 13-08-2020 Stefan Bauer elected CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar The research group leader at the MPI-IS is one of thirteen early-career researchers that have been elected. He will join the “Learning in Machines & Brains“ CIFAR research program. Stefan Bauer

Empirical Inference Award 13-08-2020 Stefan Bauer elected CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar. The research group leader at MPI-IS is one of thirteen early-career researchers that have been elected. He will join the "Learning in Machines & Brains" CIFAR research program.

Physical Intelligence Appointment 01-08-2020 Hamed Shahsavan becomes Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo

Empirical Inference News 28-07-2020 From picking up a cube to writing with a pen – learning dexterous manipulation skills on real-world robotic systems MPI-IS in Tübingen is hosting a challenge that aims to advance the state of the art in robotic manipulation and make the field more accessible to a greater number of researchers From August 3, researchers around the world are invited to take part in a challenge where each team can run its algorithm on standardized robotic platforms. The tasks range from manipulating a cube to writing with a pen. Participants can advance research, demonstrate that their algorithm works best not only in simulation but also on a real-world task, and win prizes. Stefan Bauer Manuel Wüthrich Bernhard Schölkopf Felix Widmaier / Kloss Vaibhav Agrawal Ossama Ahmed Ann-Sophie Bähr Annika Buchholz Lieya Duong Jonathan Fiene Walter Gasparetto Anirudh Goyal Felix Grimminger Felix Grüninger Bilal Hammoud Shruti Joshi Georg Martius Heiko Ott Ludovic Righetti Sebastian Stark Naomi Tashiro Frederik Träuble Ruben Werbke Jonathan Williams

Physical Intelligence News 27-07-2020 Self-healing soft material outsmarts nature A soft material that heals itself instantaneously is now reality. A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and at Pennsylvania State University tune the nanostructure of a new stretchable material in such a way that it now entirely recovers its structure and properties at the blink of an eye after being cut or poked. The squid-inspired material could revolutionize the research field of soft robotics. Since it can reverse any undergone damage, it makes many real-world applications possible in which robots have to deal with dynamic and unpredictable environments. Abdon Pena-Francesch Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence News 24-07-2020 Hakan Ceylan wins the 2020 Günter Petzow Prize The senior research scientist in the Physical Intelligence Department received the award during the virtual 2020 Intelligent Systems Summer Colloquium Hakan Ceylan Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Metin Sitti

Rationality Enhancement News 19-07-2020 Mike Prentice joined our lab! Welcome to the Rationality Enhancement Group! Despite all the Covid-19 obstacles, Mike is finally officially joining the RE group! Mike Prentice

Empirical Inference Award 16-07-2020 Bernhard Schölkopf receives Marsilius Medal and holds Marsilius Lecture "Symbolische, Statistische und Kausale Intelligenz" at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Intelligent Control Systems News 10-07-2020 Sebastian Trimpe appointed full professor at RWTH Aachen University The Cyber Valley research group leader has taken on the “Data Science in Mechanical Engineering” chair Sebastian Trimpe

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 09-07-2020 MaxPlanckForschung reports on our work and the acoustic hologram Winzige Teilchen mithilfe von Ultraschall zu manipulieren oder gar zu beliebigen Mustern zu arrangieren, das gelingt mit der Methode der akustischen Holografie. Forscher um Peer Fischer vom Stuttgarter Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme haben diese Technik erfunden. Nun arbeiten die Physiker schon an deren Anwendung in der Medizin. Kai Melde Zhichao Ma Peer Fischer

News 06-07-2020 MLSS 2020 Tübingen: the first-ever virtual event starts with a bang Participants from 39 countries on five continents are attending the online event. With lectures, round table discussions, and social events, several of the world's top machine learning scientists are interacting with promising young researchers at the Machine Learning Summer School Bernhard Schölkopf Mijung Park Georgios Arvanitidis Wittawat Jitkrittum Valerie Callaghan

Physical Intelligence News 02-07-2020 Video: Microrobots roll against blood flow to deliver drugs With the help of magnetic fields, the bots might one day navigate the circulatory system to target tumors Drug-carrying microrobots offer a way to deliver treatments straight to where they are needed, such as tumors deep within the body. But most bots designed in labs have so far been limited to easy-to-reach targets such as the gut. Now, researchers have developed drug-delivering “microrollers” that can move against blood flow (Sci. Robot. 2020, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aba5726). With the help of a magnetic field, these two-faced particles might one day navigate our circulatory system to deliver treatments to tumors. The microrollers are coated on one side with magnetic materials and on the other with antibodies specific to cancer cells. These antibodies would help the particles selectively bind to tumors in the body, where they could release their payload. This targeted approach could minimize exposure of healthy cells to cancer drugs, reducing side effects. Metin Sitti Yunus Alapan Ugur Bozuyuk

Statistical Learning Theory Award 01-07-2020 Ulrike von Luxburg got appointed as a member of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina.

Smart Nanoplasmonics Appointment 01-07-2020 Laura Na Liu heads Physics Institute at the University of Stuttgart

Rationality Enhancement News 01-07-2020 Maryam Elenguebawy joined our lab! Welcome, Maryam! Originally from Egypt, Maryam studies Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck. She joined the Rationality Enhancement Group on July 1 as a student assistant. She is interested in Neuroscience and Human-Computer Interaction (usability experience). Maryam Elenguebawy

Empirical Inference Award 26-06-2020 Alex Hawkins-Hooker, Mateo Rojas-Carulla, Bernhard Schölkopf and Gabriele Schweikert are one of the winning teams of the Encode Imputation Challenge.

News 23-06-2020 The Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems: The greatest success would be... ...if the centre were to be absorbed into something bigger, says ETH Professor Thomas Hofmann. The Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems (CLS) is the first joint research centre between ETH Zurich and the German Max Planck Society (MPG). In May 2020, it celebrated its fifth anniversary and was extended for another five years. In this interview, the centre’s co-director Hofmann takes stock, looks to the future and explains why the topic of artificial intelligence requires thinking beyond national borders.

News 19-06-2020 Yoshua Bengio will hold the Max Planck Lecture 2020 This year's lecture is being held online on June 23 The world-leading scientist in the field of deep learning will discuss how machine learning could be used in combination with contact tracing to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 Valerie Callaghan

Perceiving Systems News 17-06-2020 New video-based approach to 3D motion capture makes virtual avatars more realistic than ever With Video Inference for Body Pose and Shape Estimation (VIBE), scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have developed a neural network that makes video-based 3D motion capture more accurate, faster, and less expensive. Michael Black Nikos Athanasiou Muhammed Kocabas Valerie Callaghan

Perceiving Systems Award 16-06-2020 Nikos Kolotouros and Dimitrios Tzionas are recognized as CVPR 2020 Outstanding Reviewers.

Movement Generation and Control Dynamic Locomotion Robotics News 16-06-2020 Four-legged robot makes research comparable worldwide Solo 8 is a new research robot, developed as an open-source project in the German cities of Tübingen and Stuttgart. The dog-resembling, torque-controlled quadruped is capable of very dynamic movements. It is made entirely of 3D printed parts and off-the-shelf components, which makes it an easy to replicate platform ideal for fundamental research in legged locomotion and robotic education. The project aims to provide robotic research labs around the world with an easy-to-assemble legged robot kit that doesn’t break the bank. Additionally, software on Solo 8 is constantly improved and publicly available on GitHub. In return, the scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems hope to exchange insights with other teams. Running experiments on the same platform creates comparative data – an ideal foundation for rapid progress in the research field of robotics. Felix Grimminger Avadesh Meduri Majid Khadiv Julian Viereck Manuel Wüthrich Maximilien Naveau Vincent Berenz Steve Heim Felix Widmaier / Kloss Jonathan Fiene Alexander Badri-Spröwitz Ludovic Righetti

Perceiving Systems News 16-06-2020 Michael J. Black awarded “test of time” prize at the 2020 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Black, a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), has been awarded the Longuet-Higgins Prize. The award honors research that has made a significant impact in the research field of computer vision. Michael Black Valerie Callaghan

Perceiving Systems Award 16-06-2020 Michael J. Black: receives 2020 Longuet-Higgins Prize at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). The prize is given annually for "Contributions in Computer Vision that Have Withstood the Test of Time." Given for the paper: Sun, D., Roth, S., Black, M. J., "Secrets of optical flow estimation and their principles," In IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pages: 2432–2439, IEEE, June 2010

Autonomous Learning News 15-06-2020 CVPR Oral Now Online We just uploaded our presentations for our CVPR paper "Optimizing Rank-based Metrics with Blackbox Differentiation" to YouTube. Michal Rolinek Anselm Paulus Marin Vlastelica Pogancic Georg Martius

Haptic Intelligence Award 14-06-2020 Senior Research Scientist Ad Spiers receives an Outstanding Reviewer Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Adam Spiers

Locomotion in Biorobotic and Somatic Systems News 09-06-2020 Swimming robot gives valuable insights into locomotion of fish Researchers study morphological intelligence encoded into the physical system of animals The community of researchers developing robot-models that are designed according to the morphological intelligence of animals is growing steadily. Roboticists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Harvard University study a swimming soft robot and its wave-like propulsion under water. From their findings about the parameters which influence the thrust force of the robot, they then draw conclusions about the complex locomotion of fish. Ardian Jusufi

Haptic Intelligence News 06-06-2020 Debates on the future of robotics at ICRA: Katherine J. Kuchenbecker makes a case for virtual conferences The virtual debate was held at the 2020 International Conference on Robotics and Automation. During a 90-minute debate, leading scientists in the field of robotics discussed the pros and cons of large international conferences. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Valerie Callaghan

News 27-05-2020 Research beacons MPI-IS and ETH Zurich strengthen cooperation Extended funding for joint AI and robotics research center Both world class research institutions in the field of intelligent systems have agreed to continue their research partnership, the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems, for a further five years. Meanwhile, senior scientists from the MPI-IS have been appointed as Affiliated Professors at ETH, intensifying the academic exchange. Bernhard Schölkopf Metin Sitti Sarah Danes

Physical Intelligence News 20-05-2020 EML Webinar by Prof. Metin Sitti, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Our Director Metin Sitti hosted an Extreme Mechanical Letters (EML) Webinar with the topic "Soft-bodied Small-Scale Robots". The EML Webinars are a series of very prestigious lectures with many great speakers. Metin Sitti

Empirical Inference News 20-05-2020 Joint European Disruptive Initiative (JEDI) invites scientists to join the fight against COVID-19 The JEDI Billion Molecules against Covid-19 Grand Challenge was launched at the beginning May. The call for submissions is open until June 6. Using supercomputing and AI, participating teams will screen enormous molecular libraries against the virus's protein targets. Results will be cross-correlated to determine a “high potential” list of unprecedented quality, allowing a fast track to clinical testing. Bernhard Schölkopf

Physical Intelligence News 20-05-2020 Rolling into the deep Scientists took a leukocyte as the blueprint and developed a microrobot that has the size, shape and moving capabilities of a white blood cell. They covered the ball-shaped microroller with a magnetic nanofilm on one side and with anti-cancer drugs on the other. Simulating a blood vessel in a laboratory setting, they succeeded in magnetically navigating the microroller through this dynamic and dense environment. The drug-delivery vehicle withstood the simulated blood flow, pushing the developments in targeted drug delivery a step further: inside the body, there is no better access route to all tissues and organs than the circulatory system. A robot that could actually travel through this finely woven web would revolutionize the minimally-invasive treatment of illnesses. Yunus Alapan Ugur Bozuyuk Pelin Erkoc Alp Can Karacakol Metin Sitti

Rationality Enhancement News 18-05-2020 CogSci accepts conference paper submission! Congratulations to Anirudha Kemtur, Yash Raj Jain, Aashay Mehta, Frederick Callaway, Saksham Consul, Jugoslav Stojcheski, and Falk Lieder! Yash Raj Jain Falk Lieder Aashay Mehta Anirudha Kemtur Saksham Consul Jugoslav Stojcheski

Rationality Enhancement News 18-05-2020 Two abstracts accepted for ClearerThinking.org micro grants! Congratulations to the Rationality Enhancement Group on two abstracts being accepted for the first round of submissions for the ClearerThinking.org micro grants! Ella Eisemann Falk Lieder Hernán González

Physical Intelligence Appointment 15-05-2020 Metin Sitti becomes Affiliated Professor at ETH Zurich

Physical Intelligence News 14-05-2020 Reprogramming of macroscopic self-assembly with dynamic boundaries Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart aim to understand the underlying process of self-assembly. Their findings not only provide valuable insights into fundamental physics, but could enable the design of functional materials or self-assembled miniature robots. Utku Culha Zoey Davidson Massimo Mastrangeli Metin Sitti

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 08-05-2020 Magnetic nanopropellers deliver genetic material to cells An interdisciplinary team of scientists from Stuttgart, Heidelberg, and London developed miniature magnetic nanopropellers that can deliver genetic material to cells. They used a magnetic material that outperforms the strongest known micromagnets, yet is chemically stable, non-toxic and biologically compatible. Such new nanopropellers hold great potential for biomedical applications and minimally invasive surgeries of the future. Vincent Mauricio Kadiri Gisela Schütz Peer Fischer Kwanghyo Son Hyunah Kwon

Empirical Inference Award 07-05-2020 Sebastian Weichwald (recent graduate of EI Department): won the Causality 4 Climate NeurIPS competition together with his team members.

Empirical Inference News 07-05-2020 Recent MPI graduate and his team win Causality 4 Climate NeurIPS competition Sebastian Weichwald is part of the winning team of a competition that tried to tackle the climate change challenges from a data and causal structure learning perspective Sebastian Weichwald Bernhard Schölkopf

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Theory of Inhomogeneous Condensed Matter News 05-05-2020 Drops of nanoparticles self-stir and communicate Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have discovered a new mechanism of self-organization of active matter. When photochemically active nanoparticles are enclosed at high density within a drop and are exposed to UV light, a self-organized flow pattern emerges by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Furthermore, each drop communicates with neighbouring drops by exchanging chemicals, and coordination of their internal flows occurs – even when far apart. Dhruv Pratap Singh Peer Fischer Mihail N. Popescu Siegfried Dietrich

Rationality Enhancement News 04-05-2020 Benjamin Prystawski joined our lab Welcome, Ben! The Rationaliy Enhancement Group is continuing to grow despite the Corona crisis situation Benjamin Prystawski

News 04-05-2020 The MPI-IS at a glance Our institute makes highlights report available online The report features the leading scientists of our institute and many of our exciting ground research projects in the field of intelligent systems. Valerie Callaghan

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Appointment 01-05-2020 Peer Fischer wird Gastprofessor am GIST in Südkorea

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 30-04-2020 EunJin Choi receives the 2020 Athanasiou Student Paper Award from the Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

Modern Magnetic Systems News 30-04-2020 Scientists prove the existence of Skyrmion tubes For the first time, an international team of researchers succeeded in demonstrating the previously unknown structure of magnetic skyrmion tubes in 3D. This knowledge makes it possible to better understand the formation and destruction of skyrmions and to use the magnetic structures in so-called spintronic storage devices. Joachim Gräfe Gisela Schütz

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 29-04-2020 Eunjin Choi wins Athanasiou ABME Student Paper Award Eunjin Choi has won the 2020 Athanasiou Student Paper Award for the work, "A High-Fidelity Phantom for the Simulation and Quantitative Evaluation of Transurethral Resection of the Prostate" published in the journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering. The authors of the work are Eunjin Choi, Stefano Palagi, Peer Fischer, Tian Qiu, and collaborators from the University Hospital Freiburg. EunJin Choi Stefano Palagi Peer Fischer Tian Qiu

Autonomous Vision Autonomous Learning Dynamic Locomotion Intelligent Control Systems News 29-04-2020 MPI for Intelligent Systems continues video series Video No 4 is now available Short films present scientists' research projects in an understandable way Alejandro Posada Andreas Geiger Alexander Badri-Spröwitz Georg Martius Sebastian Trimpe

Physical Intelligence Award 28-04-2020 Hakan Ceylan received the Günter Petzow Prize.

Physical Intelligence News 28-04-2020 Scientists outsmart nature by building super liquid-repellent dry adhesives A specific fibril tip shape design is the key to achieving elastic dry fibril adhesives with super liquid repellency. This new bioinspired material opens up many possibilities for use, as it prevents any form of liquid droplet or layer from hindering or degrading its adhesion. Ville Liimatainen Dirk Drotlef Donghoon Son Metin Sitti

Perceiving Systems News 24-04-2020 Scientists in Tübingen develop 3D head model that can be used to design better-fitting protective gear The FLAME model makes it possible to create realistic 3D head shapes capable of accurately mimicking human facial expressions. It could help designers come up with more comfortable protective masks for faces of different shapes and sizes. Michael Black Timo Bolkart Joachim Tesch Valerie Callaghan

Rationality Enhancement News 22-04-2020 Pin-Zhen Chen joined our lab Welcome, Pin-Zhen (aka Kelly)! Pin-Zehn, also known to us as Kelly, is a Bachelor student at the University of Tübingen in her final semester. She is orinally from Taiwan and is currently working toward her degree in Computational Linguistics. She joined the Rationality Enhancement Group on April 22 and is mainly supporting the group through web development and web applications for the various research projects as needed. We are so happy to have her join our team Pin-Zhen Chen

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