News & Awards

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

News 20-09-2021 Wanted: new research group leaders Applications are open until November 14 Max Planck is looking for outstanding candidates to establish up to two new independent Max Planck Research Groups at our institute’s Tübingen site and one independent Cyber Valley Research Group located at the Stuttgart site of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Florian Mayer

News 13-09-2021 Anniversary website of the MPI-IS and former MPI-MR launched For all employees, alumni, and friends of both Institutes, it is a place to see and read about the history that spans 10 and 100 years. Alejandro Posada Nassim Taghipour Claudia Daefler Matthias Tröndle

News 13-09-2021 CLS doctoral fellowships 2022: Call for applications Apply by November 1, 2021, to join the CLS Ph.D. Program in 2022. Sarah Danes

News 13-09-2021 Funded Ph.D. Positions at the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen collaborate to offer an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS). This doctoral program will accept its sixth generation of Ph.D. students in spring of 2022. Leila Masri Sara Sorce

Physics for Inference and Optimization Award 09-09-2021 Caterina De Bacco received the 2021 EPS Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Prize in the Statistical And Nonlinear Physics Division Caterina De Bacco

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Appointment 09-09-2021 Tingting Yu appointed Assistant Professor at South China University of Technology

Locomotion in Biorobotic and Somatic Systems News 07-09-2021 Geckos glide, crash-land, but don’t fall thanks to tail Soft perching robot validates the benefit of having a fifth leg A scientific study published in Nature Communications Biology by researchers who work at the intersection between robotics and biology shows that geckos are capable of gliding. In the publication titled Tails stabilize landing of gliding geckos crashing head-first into tree trunks, the authors present footage showing that geckos with no major specializations for flight are in fact capable gliders. Experiments with a gecko-inspired robot confirm the reptile’s locomotion abilities are not entirely down to its feet. The tail plays just as much a pivotal role, the team from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Siena College in New York, and the University of California at Berkeley discovered. Ardian Jusufi Robert Siddall

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Appointment 02-09-2021 Peer Fischer appointed Distiguished Lecturer

Locomotion in Biorobotic and Somatic Systems News 02-09-2021 The gecko's most astounding maneuver has nothing to do with its sticky feet (CNN) - Geckos would definitely medal in a contest for nature's best feet. The lizard's sticky toes, covered in tiny hairs, mean it can climb across ceilings in a fantastic feat of evolution. But scientists say the lizards' tails are just as extraordinary, with geckos performing a remarkable, if ungainly, maneuver that allows them to land securely and at ballistic speeds on vertical surfaces like tree trunks. Ardian Jusufi Robert Siddall

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 01-09-2021 Johannes Sachs wins the 2021 Springer dissertation award for his Ph.D. thesis.

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

Perceiving Systems Award 31-08-2021 Timo Bolkart and Victoria Fernandez Abrevaya are recognized as ICCV 2021 Outstanding Reviewers.

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 30-08-2021 Dr. Tingting Yu becomes Assistant Professor at the South China University of Technology Congrats and good luck to Dr. Tingting Yu Congrats and good luck to Tingting Yu who recently obtained her Ph.D. in the group and who will start her own lab as an Assistant Professor in the Shien-Ming Wu School of Intelligent Engineering, South China University of Technology. Best of luck and lots of success!

Rationality Enhancement News 26-08-2021 "Resource-Rational Models of Human Goal Pursuit" is now published! Great work Ben, Florian, Mateo, and Falk! Benjamin Prystawski Florian Mohnert Mateo Tosic Falk Lieder

News 13-08-2021 ELLIS PhD Program: Call for applications Apply by November 15, 2021, to join the ELLIS PhD Program in 2022 Daniela Diaconu Lynn Anthonissen

Perceiving Systems Award 30-07-2021 Michael J. Black, Simone Behrens, Javier Romero, Stephan Streuber, and Anne Thaler: Their paper ``Body size estimation of self and others in females varying in BMI'' reached in July 2021 the PLoS ONE top 10% most cited papers, for papers published in 2018.

Haptic Intelligence Award 22-07-2021 Ph.D. student Alexis E. Block is selected as a 2021 Computing Innovation Fellow (CIFellow) to support her postdoctoral research with Veronica Santos at UCLA in the USA Alexis Block

News 20-07-2021 Constraints in First-Order Optimization New preprint available

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

Haptic Intelligence Award 10-07-2021 Postdoc Yitian Shao receives a two-year Humboldt Research Fellowship to support his postdoctoral research in the HI Department Yitian Shao

Haptic Intelligence Award 09-07-2021 Ph.D. student Saekwang Nam and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker jointly win Honorable Mention for their IEEE Transactions on Haptics short paper at the 2021 IEEE World Haptics Conference Saekwang Nam Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

Haptic Intelligence Award 09-07-2021 Postdoc Yitian Shao wins the 2020 EuroHaptics Society prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in the field of haptics; he earned his doctorate with Yon Visell at UCSB in the USA Yitian Shao

Physical Intelligence News 07-07-2021 Roboter minimalinvasiv Attached is the article in c’t magazine

Physical Intelligence News 06-07-2021 Kirigami Metastructures: Liquid-Crystal-Elastomer-Actuated Reconfigurable Microscale Kirigami Metastructures (Adv. Mater. 25/2021) Achieving wireless miniaturized reconfigurable metastructures remains a challenge due to the difficult nature of the fabrication and actuation processes at the micrometer scale. In article number <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15214095/2021/33/25">2008605 </a>, Metin Sitti and co-workers develop an actuation platform for thermally reconfiguring micro-metasurfaces by using uniaxially aligned liquid crystal elastomers, which serve as efficient artificial muscles to provide energy for actuation of the microscale kirigami metastructures. Mingchao Zhang Hamed Shahsavan Yubing Guo Abdon Pena-Francesch Metin Sitti

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

Rationality Enhancement News 01-07-2021 The Life Improvement Science 2021 inaugural conference concluded successfully on 13 June, 2021! Life Improvement Science (LIS) is an emerging transdisciplinary research field that investigates how we can help people do more good in better ways (well-doing). The ultimate goal of the conference was to promote the long-term well-doing of humanity. The conference featured invited talks on the most promising scientific approaches from motivation science, moral psychology, positive psychology, cognitive science, effective altruism, digital interventions, character education, social and personality psychology, coaching, wisdom scholarship, economics, sociology, and other relevant areas from some of the key researchers in these fields. We had more than 600 registered participants and we successfully gathered 100+ researchers to join the community after the conference and they will collaborate on the topic LIS in the future.

Autonomous Vision Perceiving Systems News 26-06-2021 Better decisions, more control: “Best Paper Award” for Tübingen researchers Two Cyber Valley researchers awarded for best scientific paper at world-renowned conference Great success for two AI researchers from the Cyber Valley ecosystem: Michael Niemeyer, PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, and Prof. Dr. Andreas Geiger from the University of Tübingen were honored with the ‘Best Paper Award’ at this year’s Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) for their paper ‘GIRAFFE: Representing Scenes as Compositional Generative Neural Feature Fields’. Andreas Geiger Michael Niemeyer

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 25-06-2021 Jan-Philipp Günther has won the the German Bunsen Society 2021 Agnes Pockels Ph.D. Award.

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 25-06-2021 Jan-Philipp Günther wins the Agnes Pockels Ph.D. Award Jan-Philipp Günther has won the 2021 Agnes Pockels Ph.D. Award, which is awarded annually by the German Bunsen Society for an outstanding doctoral thesis in the field of physical chemistry. Jan-Philipp Günther Peer Fischer

Empirical Inference News 24-06-2021 Gary Bécigneul awarded the Max Planck Society’s “Youngest Ph.D.” award Gary Bécigneul completed his doctoral studies at the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems in July 2020, and has since continued to build the start-up he founded after completing his doctoral studies. Gary Becigneul Bernhard Schölkopf Sarah Danes Valerie Callaghan

Rationality Enhancement News 24-06-2021 ICCM accepts paper on measuring and modelling how people learn how to plan! Great work Ruiqi, Yash, and Falk! Ruiqi He Yash Raj Jain Falk Lieder

Physical Intelligence News 21-06-2021 Savas Tasoglu receives Humboldt Research Fellowship for experienced researchers A new guest scientist joined the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for twelve months to continue his microfluidics and biomaterials research in Germany. Savas Tasoglu Metin Sitti

Perceiving Systems Award 21-06-2021 Best Paper Candidate, IEEE/CVF Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021, for the paper "SCANimate: Weakly Supervised Learning of Skinned Clothed Avatar Networks" by Saito, S., Yang, J., Ma, Q., and Black, M. J.

Perceiving Systems Award 21-06-2021 Best Paper Candidate, IEEE/CVF Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2021, for the paper "On Self-Contact and Human Pose" by Lea Müller, Ahmed Osman, Siyu Tang, Chun-Hao Paul Huang, and Michael Black.

Haptic Intelligence Award 18-06-2021 Ph.D. student Rachael Bevill Burns wins Honorable Mention for Best Research Lightning Talk at the IMPRS-IS Boot Camp Rachael Burns

Locomotion in Biorobotic and Somatic Systems News 17-06-2021 Robotic fish learns to match its swimming speed to the current Fish have a sensory system known as the lateral line, which allows them to detect movements, vibrations and pressure gradients in the water. Scientists have now given a robotic fish its own version of that system, letting it determine the best swimming speed. Ardian Jusufi

Robotic Materials News 16-06-2021 Electrohydraulic arachno-bot a fascinating lightweight Fast and efficient nature-inspired joints power robotic systems Goodbye, bulky components and connectors: A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany and at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US has now found a new way to exploit the principles of spiders’ joints to create lightweight robots. Christoph Keplinger Philipp Rothemund

Learning and Dynamical Systems News 14-06-2021 PhD openings in Learning and Dynamical Systems Open PhD positions at the Learning and Dynamical Systems group.

News 01-06-2021 Michael J. Black is elected member of Leopoldina A director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Black is one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of computer vision. Germany’s National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina announced on Friday that it has elected Michael J Black, founding director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Honorarprofessor at the University of Tübingen, and Cyber Valley speaker, as a member. Michael Black Valerie Callaghan

Empirical Inference Appointment 01-06-2021 Mijung Park becomes Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada

Physical Intelligence News 01-06-2021 Wei Feng receives Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship The scientist working in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart will be supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for two years to continue his soft robotic research in Germany. Wei Feng Metin Sitti

Rationality Enhancement News 25-05-2021 Transfer of the season! Julian starts his Ph.D. at the USCD! Julian Skirzynski

Perceiving Systems Award 19-05-2021 Victoria Fernandez Abrevaya, Nikos Athanasiou, Michael Black, Timo Bolkart, Arjun Chandrasekaran, Vassilis Choutas, Partha Ghosh, Nikos Kolotouros, Dimitrios Tzionas, are recognized as CVPR 2021 Outstanding Reviewers.

Neural Capture and Synthesis Award 14-05-2021 Justus Thies is elected as EG Junior Fellow

Neural Capture and Synthesis Blog Post 14-05-2021 Justus Thies elected as EG Junior Fellow The Eurographics Junior Fellows have elected Justus Thies to join the EG Junior Fellows. Justus Thies

Learning and Dynamical Systems Award 10-05-2021 Extension of Branco Weiss Fellowship Extension of Branco Weiss Fellowship Michael Muehlebach

Learning and Dynamical Systems News 10-05-2021 Extension of Branco Weiss Fellowship for Michael Mühlebach Fellowship is extended until the end of 2023. The Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science is a community of exceptional young scientists who share a passion for taking research beyond the mainstream. Michael Muehlebach

Dynamic Locomotion News 06-05-2021 Oezge Drama Ph.D. defense Oezge defends her Ph.D. Ph.D. defense. Oezge Drama

Autonomous Learning News 05-05-2021 Machine learning dynamics of quantum systems Researchers at the University of Tübingen and MPI-IS have applied machine learning methods to understand the quantum dynamics in physical models. Georg Martius Dominik Zietlow

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