News & Awards

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2021 Jiachen Zhang, Yubing Guo, and Xinghao Hu joined the City University of Hong Kong, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Northwestern Polytechnical University, respectively as an assistant professor in China.

News 17-12-2020 A real “gamechanger” for AI in the next decade Chancellor Merkel gives go-ahead for “AI Breakthrough Hub” – which will be funded by the federal and state governments as well as the Hector Foundation The German Federal government and the State of Baden-Württemberg have announced plans to significantly increase their support for Tübingen as a location for excellence in AI research and innovation. In the years to come, several hundred million euros will be earmarked for research and development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) – including 100 million euros from the Hector Stiftung, a foundation founded and run by SAP co-founder Hans-Werner Hector. Among other things, the money will support “Hector Endowed ELLIS Fellowships” for outstanding researchers in machine learning and related fields. Michael Black Bernhard Schölkopf Matthias Bethge Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

Autonomous Vision News 10-12-2020 Teaching machines to see like people Researchers in Tübingen develop new approach to 3D-aware image synthesis With Generative Radiance Fields for 3D-Aware Image Synthesis (GRAF), scientists from the University of Tübingen and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have vastly improved the quality of machine-generated 3D images of single objects. Andreas Geiger Katja Schwarz Yiyi Liao Valerie Callaghan

Perceiving Systems Award 02-12-2020 Soubhik Sanyal is recognized as an outstanding reviewer for ACCV 2020.

Haptic Intelligence Award 29-11-2020 Ph.D. student Saekwang Nam receives a KIST Europe Scholarship Award from the Korean Scientists and Engineers Association in Germany Saekwang Nam

Perceiving Systems Empirical Inference Award 26-11-2020 Best Paper Award, International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV), 2020, for the paper "Grasping Field: Learning Implicit Representations for Human Grasps", by Karunratanakul, K., Yang, J., Zhang, Y., Black, M., Muandet, K., Tang, S.

Embodied Vision News 23-11-2020 Code Release: "EM-Fusion" and "Co-Section" We released the source code for our paper "EM-Fusion: Dynamic Object-Level SLAM With Probabilistic Data Association" (ICCV 2019) and "Where Does It End? - Reasoning About Hidden Surfaces by Object Intersection Constraints" (CVPR 2020). Michael Strecke Jörg Stückler

Physical Intelligence News 19-11-2020 The “top ten Ph.D. graduates of Harbin Institute of technology” award Congratulations to our alumni Xinjian Fan, who was just awarded as one of the top ten Ph.D. graduates in Harbin Institute of Technology, China. Fan Xinjian Xiaoguang Dong Alp Can Karacakol Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence News 11-11-2020 Bioinspired cilia help understand which movement pattern generates maximal fluid flows Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, develop artificial cilia that can be programmed to move in waves. In experiments, the researchers show how the millimeter-small cilia can pump viscous liquids just as effectively as their natural counterparts. Their research helps shed light on the mystery regarding which movement pattern generates a maximal fluid flow. Published in Science Advances, their findings contribute to a better understanding of the biomechanics of real cilia, and to the development of miniature robotic pumping devices that could one day be used inside the human body. Xiaoguang Dong Wenqi Hu Ziyu Ren Metin Sitti

News 10-11-2020 Cyber Valley institutions once again among Germany’s top ranked at leading machine learning conference In total, 31 papers from Cyber Valley have been accepted to the upcoming NeurIPS 2020 conference With 31 accepted papers, researchers from the Cyber Valley ecosystem are set to make a strong showing once again at the upcoming 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s leading conference for machine learning is going to be held online from December 6 to 12. Bernhard Schölkopf

Physical Intelligence News 09-11-2020 Metin Sitti receives the «Breakthrough of the Year» Award at the Fallings Walls World Science Summit in Berlin A Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Sitti is one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of physical intelligence. He is a pioneer in several areas of research, among them wireless tiny medical robots, gecko-inspired adhesives, and bio-inspired miniature robots. Metin Sitti

News 04-11-2020 Researchers at MPI-IS enable better analyses of large networks Using a recently developed algorithmic sampling method, Nicolò Ruggeri and Caterina de Bacco aim to help social scientists better understand the relationships between nodes in large networks, including social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter. In the next step, the scientists plan to apply their new method in collaboration with sociologists to investigate the connection between social media and real events. Nicolo Ruggeri Caterina De Bacco Valerie Callaghan

News 02-11-2020 IMPRS-IS Ph.D. Program: Call for Applications The International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems will accept its fifth generation of Ph.D. students in spring of 2021! 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). Interested applicants can find more details on how to apply here. Leila Masri Sara Sorce

Physical Intelligence Award 02-11-2020 Metin Sitti received the "Breakthrough of the Year" Award

Perceiving Systems Award 26-10-2020 Partha Ghosh, Shashank Tripathi, and Dimitrios Tzionas receive the Outstanding Reviewer Award, European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 2020

Physical Intelligence News 26-10-2020 Stealth microrobots fly under the radar of the immune system Our immune system generally protects us from pathogens but sometimes it can work against us by eliminating drugs or other therapeutics circulating in our bloodstream Pol Cabanach Xifro Abdon Pena-Francesch Devin Sheehan Ugur Bozuyuk Oncay Yasa Metin Sitti

Neural Capture and Synthesis News 20-10-2020 BIDT: Echt oder? Deep Fakes, Synthetische Medien: Chance oder Gefahr? What is the impact of DeepFakes on our society? How does it change our view on digital media? Is the technology a danger or a chance? Justus Thies

Physical Intelligence News 15-10-2020 Meng Li 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 her soft robotic research in Germany. Meng Li Metin Sitti

Rationality Enhancement News 13-10-2020 Falk Lieder talks at Graz University of Technology about Life Improvement Science Falk Lieder talks about his work on Life Improvement Science at the Computer Science Department of Graz University of Technology in Austria Falk Lieder

Haptic Intelligence News 08-10-2020 Haptic Intelligence Department rocks EuroHaptics 2020! Experiences with a hybrid conference during the COVID-19 pandemic Director Katherine J. Kuchenbecker and fourteen other members of the MPI-IS Haptic Intelligence (HI) Department presented twelve of their current research projects at the first-ever hybrid EuroHaptics conference. This meeting took place both physically and virtually from September 6 to 9, 2020, in Leiden, Netherlands. EuroHaptics is the primary European meeting for researchers working on haptic perception and technology. Together, the HI team presented nine work-in-progress (WIP) posters and three hands-on demonstrations, winning one award and being a finalist for another. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Hasti Seifi Yasemin Vardar Rachael Burns Saekwang Nam Hyosang Lee Neha Thomas Ravali Gourishetti Farimah Fazlollahi Maria Paola Forte David Gueorguiev Behnam Khojasteh Cara Nunez Gokhan Serhat Hojin Lee Eric Young

Autonomous Vision News 07-10-2020 KITTI-360 Dataset We have released the KITTI-360 dataset, a large-scale dataset with rich sensors, accurate localisations and comprehensive annotations! It aims to foster research in new important research areas relevant to the computer graphics, computer vision and robotics community. Andreas Geiger Yiyi Liao

Physical Intelligence Award 02-10-2020 Junghwan Byun: received a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Fellowship.

News 02-10-2020 Bernhard Schölkopf gewinnt den Deutschen KI-Innovationspreis WELT zeichnet Top-Leistungen bei Künstlicher Intelligenz aus Der Spitzenforscher fördert und betreibt seit Jahren anwendungsnahe Spitzenforschung im Bereich der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Er ist einer der international angesehensten KI-Forscher und eine der prägendsten Persönlichkeiten der globalen Machine Learning Szene. Bernhard Schölkopf

Rationality Enhancement News 02-10-2020 Gabriela Iwama is back Gabriela supported the Rationality Enhancement Group before and we are happy to welcome her back! Gabriela Iwama

Empirical Inference Award 01-10-2020 Bernhard Schölkopf awarded with "Deutscher KI-Innovationspreis" on October 1, 2020.

Embodied Vision Award 01-10-2020 Rama Kandukuri, Jan Achterhold, and Jörg Stückler receive an Honorable Mention at GCPR 2020 for their paper "Learning to Identify Physical Parameters from Video Using Differentiable Physics". Rama Kandukuri Jan Achterhold Jörg Stückler

Rationality Enhancement News 01-10-2020 Amazing! Both tools won Micro Grants from ClearerThinking.org! Congratulations to each team on making it to the final round of ClearerThinking's Micro-Grant competition! Falk Lieder Gabriela Iwama Hernán González Ella Eisemann Victoria Amo

Haptic Intelligence Appointment 01-10-2020 Hasti Seifi becomes Assistant Professor at University of Copenhagen

Embodied Vision News 01-10-2020 Honorable Mention at GCPR 2020 for our paper Learning to Identify Physical Parameters from Video Using Differentiable Physics We received a honorable mention at this year's DAGM GCPR 2020 for our paper Learning to Identify Physical Parameters from Video Using Differentiable Physics by R. Kandukuri, J. Achterhold, M. Moeller and J. Stueckler Rama Kandukuri Jan Achterhold Jörg Stückler

Physical Intelligence Appointment 01-10-2020 Wendong Wang becomes Assistant Professor at UM-SJTU Joint Institute

News 29-09-2020 The Max Planck-ETH PhD program: Call for Applications The Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems is offering funded PhD positions for 2021. The deadline for applications is November 2, 2020. Sarah Danes

Embodied Vision News 25-09-2020 Code Release: "Planning from Images with Deep Latent Gaussian Process Dynamics" We released the source code for our paper "Planning from Images with Deep Latent Gaussian Process Dynamics" by Nathanael Bosch, Jan Achterhold, Laura Leal-Taixé, and Joerg Stueckler Nathanael Bosch Jan Achterhold Jörg Stückler

Physical Intelligence News 24-09-2020 Solar-battery effect enables a new light-driven organic microswimmer to operate in the dark An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Max Planck Institutes for Intelligent Systems and Solid State Research has developed a biocompatible microswimmer made of carbon nitride, which they can propel forward through light. The particle can also store solar energy similar to miniature solar cells equipped with batteries, and can thus also swim in the dark using the stored energy. Even if the illumination is turned off, it can move forward for about half an hour with just 30 seconds of prior illumination. The photo-charging ability of this newly developed microswimmer opens up many opportunities for targeted drug delivery, environmental remediation, and other potential applications for such photo-chargeable micro- and nanomachines. Varun Sridhar Metin Sitti Filip Podjaski Bettina Lotsch

News 22-09-2020 New AI in medicine initiative launched “Offers the opportunity to pool the region’s many strengths and give Baden-Württemberg global visibility in the field” The University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institutes for Biological Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems have launched a new initiative for the use of artificial intelligence in medicine and the life sciences. “The current pandemic shows that we need to become faster and more efficient in fighting global health threats. In the future, we must thus make much greater use of the potential of AI. The new initiative offers the opportunity to combine all our strengths and give Baden-Württemberg global visibility when it comes to AI applications in medicine,” said Science Minister Theresia Bauer, who welcomed the initiative for closer cooperation in the field of AI and medicine, on Tuesday. Michael Black Valerie Callaghan

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 15-09-2020 CMOS chip projects ultrasound movies Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Stuttgart and IMS CHIPS develope ultrasound projector on base of a CMOS chip Scientists of the Micro, Nano and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart have developed a digital chip that can be used to project movies with ultrasound. The researchers report on this in an article in the magazine "Nature Communications". The ultrasound projector is based on a special microchip that was developed and manufactured at the Institut für Mikroelektronik Stuttgart (IMS CHIPS). The chip generates targeted micro bubbles that can be switched on and off digitally (via the chip) in rapid succession. This makes it possible for the first time to protect high-resolution holographic images that change over time. Peer Fischer Tian Qiu Kai Melde Athanasios Athanassiadis Zhichao Ma Claudia Daefler

News 15-09-2020 ELLIS inaugurates 30 research units at leading institutions across Europe At a virtual event on Tuesday, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems presented the broad scope of research its units will cover in the field of modern AI. Bernhard Schölkopf

Perceiving Systems Autonomous Vision Empirical Inference Probabilistic Numerics Probabilistic Learning Group News 10-09-2020 ELLIS PhD Program: Call for Applications The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems offers an interdisciplinary PhD program. The ELLIS PhD program is a key element of the ELLIS initiative and its goal is to foster and educate the best talent in machine learning related research areas by pairing outstanding students with leading academic and industrial researchers in Europe. The program supports excellent PhDs across Europe by giving them access to leading research through boot camps, summer schools and workshops of the ELLIS programs. Every PhD student is supervised by one ELLIS fellow/scholar and one ELLIS member from a different country and conducts a 1 year exchange at the other location.

News 09-09-2020 Chancellor Angela Merkel and Minister-President Winfried Kretschmann visit Cyber Valley In several virtual tours, they gained insights into the latest research on artificial intelligence “Cyber Valley is a prime example of Germany’s attractiveness of Germany as a location for AI. Science and business are working hand in hand and showing how excellent research can be successfully transferred into innovative applications and business models,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, following a virtual tour of Cyber Valley facilities with Winfried Kretschmann, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg. “The Federal Government will continue to support AI research and technology transfer. With the ‘Future Package’, we are providing an additional two billion euros for AI ecosystems of international appeal, attractive conditions for talent, and state-of-the-art computing infrastructures.” Bernhard Schölkopf Michael Black

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 09-09-2020 Detecting the handedness of a single nanoparticle Nature Communications Stuttgart, 9. September 2020: Scientists from the Micro, Nano and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have developed a new spectroscopic-microscope, which can be used to observe a single nanoparticle in real time. This enabled the first detection of a nanoparticle’s handedness while it is freely moving in solution. The results of their research paves the way for optical measurements with high detection sensitivities down to single molecules and in samples of ultra-low volumes. Peer Fischer Jan-Philipp Günther Johannes Sachs Andrew Mark Claudia Daefler

Haptic Intelligence Award 09-09-2020 Ph.D. student Saekwang Nam and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker jointly win the EuroHaptics 2020 Award for Best Poster Saekwang Nam Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

News 01-09-2020 Aamir Ahmad appointed Tenure-Track Professor at the University of Stuttgart The leader of the Perceiving Systems Department’s Robot Perception Group is joining the university’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and Geodesy effective September 1, 2020. Ahmad will be adding robotics and AI to the aerospace faculty's fields of research. Aamir Ahmad Michael Black Valerie Callaghan

Haptic Intelligence Appointment 01-09-2020 Ad Spiers becomes Lecturer at Imperial College London

Rationality Enhancement News 01-09-2020 Lovis Heindrich joined our lab! Welcome, Lovis! Reinforcement learning, machine learning, and using AI to make a positive impact! Lovis Heindrich

Intelligent Control Systems Appointment 01-09-2020 Sebastian Trimpe becomes Full Professor at RWTH Aachen

Haptic Intelligence Appointment 01-09-2020 Yasemin Vardar wird Assistenzprofessorin an der TU Delft

Physical Intelligence Award 01-09-2020 Meng Li, Sungwoo Chun and Shuaizhong Zhang received the Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.

Modern Magnetic Systems News 27-08-2020 Demonstration of k-vector selective microscopy for nanoscale mapping of higher order spin wave modes Nanoscale Backcover Higher order spin wave modes are deconvoluted by their k-vector and directly imaged with X-ray microscopy, achieving <20 nm spatial and <40 ps temporal resolution. These real space measurements allow a direct insight into the inner workings of complex spin wave systems and reveal their fine structure and localization profi le. While confirming analytical theory on the nanoscale, design paths towards multimode signal transmission in magnonic waveguides are shown. Joachim Gräfe Nick-André Träger

Haptic Intelligence News 27-08-2020 Three scientists from MPI-IS Stuttgart accept appointments at top universities across Europe The researchers from Katherine Kuchenbecker's Haptic Intelligence Department see their time at the MPI-IS as a valuable springboard for the next step in their academic careers. Hasti Seifi, Ad Spiers, and Yasemin Vardar are set to take up their new positions in the coming month. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Hasti Seifi Adam Spiers Yasemin Vardar Valerie Callaghan

Robotic Materials News 25-08-2020 Christoph Keplinger joins MPI-IS as new Director With the appointment of the 36-year old Austrian, the Max Planck Society has attracted a world-renowned scientist whose background and expertise perfectly complement and extend the research at MPI-IS and within the Cyber Valley ecosystem Dr. Keplinger’s research focuses on fundamentally challenging current limitations of materials and components used to build robots. He is regarded as a pioneer in the field of bio-inspired soft robotics and a rising star in the international robotics and materials science communities. As an MPI-IS director, he has founded the new “Robotic Materials” department. Dr. Keplinger will have a decisive influence on the future development of the institute as well as on the excellence of Cyber Valley, Europe’s largest research consortium in the field of AI. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker Metin Sitti Christoph Keplinger

News 25-08-2020 Ksenia Keplinger appointed Group Leader of the new independent Organizational Leadership & Diversity group The group will investigate research questions at the intersection of technology and organizational leadership and contribute to more diversity and inclusion, particularly around women in the workplace, at MPI-IS and beyond. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

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