News & Awards

Smart Nanoplasmonics News 01-03-2017 Magic ink from the nano world A chemical reaction alters the colours of plasmonic prints Plasmonic printing produces resolutions several times greater than conventional printing methods. In plasmonic printing, colours are formed on the surfaces of tiny metallic particles when light excites their electrons to oscillate. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have now shown how the colours of such metallic particles can be altered with hydrogen. The technique could open the way for animating ultra-high-resolution images and for developing extremely sharp displays. At the same time, it provides new approaches for encrypting information and detecting counterfeits. Laura Na Liu

News 28-02-2017 A filter for heavy hydrogen Deuterium and tritium can be separated from each other relatively easily using a functionalized metal-organic framework compound Deuterium and tritium are substances with a future - but they are rare. The heavy isotopes of hydrogen not only have numerous applications in science but could also contribute to the energy mix of tomorrow as fuels for nuclear fusion. Deuterium is also contained in some drugs that are currently undergoing regulatory approval in the US. However, the process of filtering deuterium out of the natural isotopic mixture of hydrogen is at present both difficult and expensive. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, the University of Leipzig, Jacobs University Bremen, the University of Augsburg, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) may be able to remedy this problem. They have presented a metal-organic framework compound that can be used to separate the two isotopes from normal hydrogen more efficiently than previous methods. Michael Hirscher

Autonomous Vision Award 23-02-2017 Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz Prize for Andreas Geiger.

Physical Intelligence News 22-02-2017 3D-microdevice for minimally invasive surgeries Scientists take challenge of developing functional microdevices for direct access to the brain, spinal cord, eye and other delicate parts of human body A tiny robot that gets into the human body through the simple medical injection and, passing healthy organs, finds and treats directly the goal – a non-operable tumor… Doesn’t it sound at least like science-fiction? To make it real, a growing number of researchers are now working towards this direction with the prospect of transforming many aspects of healthcare and bioengineering in the nearest future. What makes it not so easy are unique challenges pertaining to design, fabrication and encoding functionality in producing functional microdevices. Metin Sitti Hakan Ceylan Immihan Ceren Yasa

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 14-02-2017 New drive for tiny vessels Miniaturized robots can be propelled through biological fluids by an enzymatic reaction or ultrasound Nanorobots and other mini-vehicles might be able to perform important services in medicine one day – for example, by conducting remotely-controlled operations or transporting pharmaceutical agents to a desired location in the body. However, to date it has been hard to steer such micro- and nanoswimmers accurately through biological fluids such as blood, synovial fluid or the inside of the eyeball. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are now presenting two new approaches for constructing propulsion systems for tiny floating bodies. In the case of one motor, the propulsion is generated by bubbles which are caused to oscillate by ultrasound. With the other, a current caused by the product of an enzymatic reaction propels a nanoswimmer. Peer Fischer Sámuel Sánchez

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

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 12-01-2017 Our research in Der Spiegel und Die Zeit Our nanorobots are the topic of a special report on robots in the newspaper Die Zeit and Der Spiegel has previously covered our research, also highlights our work in its 2017 March 11 issue. Kai Melde Andrew Mark Tian Qiu Tung Chun Lee Peer Fischer

Autonomous Motion News 02-01-2017 Big Data in Robotics Guest edited by Jeannette Bohg, Matei Ciocarlie, Javier Civera, Lydia E. Kavraki. ... new big data methods have the potential to allow robots to understand and operate in significantly more complex environments than was possible even in the recent past. This should lead to a qualitative leap in the performance and deployability of robotics in a wide array of practical applications and real settings. Jeannette Bohg

Haptic Intelligence News 02-01-2017 Hasti Seifi wins EuroHaptics Society prize for best Ph.D. thesis Dr. Hasti Seifi is the winner of the 2017 EuroHaptics Society award for the best Ph.D. thesis in the field of haptics. While Ms. Seifi is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart, the award honors research she conducted at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, where she completed her doctorate in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Karon E. MacLean. Hasti Seifi Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Ahmet Fatih Tabak joined Bahcesehir University as an assistant professor in Turkey.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Byung-Wook Park joined Youngstown University as an assistant professor in USA.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Hakan Ceylan received the Masoumeh Ghaderi Best Talk Prize at the 5th annual workshop on Micro and Nanotechnologies for medicine: Emerging Frontiers and Applications in Boston, USA.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Hamed Shahsavan received the NSERC from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Hunter Bryant Gilbert joined Louisiana State University as an assistant professor in USA.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Massimo Mastrangeli joined Delft University of Technology as an assistant professor in Netherlands.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2017 Yubing Guo, Yunus Alapan, and Zoey Davidson received the Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship.

Smart Nanoplasmonics Award 30-12-2016 Laura Na Liu is the recipient of the 2016 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics for outstanding contributions to Nanooptics, Nanophotonics, Nano plasmonics, and Metamaterials.

Modern Magnetic Systems Award 20-12-2016 Ernst Eckhard Koch Prize for Joachim Gräfe

Modern Magnetic Systems News 20-12-2016 Ernst Eckhard Koch Prize for Joachim Graefe On December 8, The Association of Friends of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin granted the Ernst Eckhard Koch Prize for an outstanding PhD thesis in the research area of synchrotron radiation as well as the innovation prize “Synchrotron Radiation”. The award ceremony took place at the 8th BER II and BESSY II Users’ Meeting. Joachim Gräfe

Modern Magnetic Systems News 20-12-2016 Ernst Eckhard Koch Prize for Joachim Graefe On December 8, The Association of Friends of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin granted the Ernst Eckhard Koch Prize for an outstanding PhD thesis in the research area of synchrotron radiation as well as the innovation prize “Synchrotron Radiation”. The award ceremony took place at the 8th BER II and BESSY II Users’ Meeting. Joachim Gräfe

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 20-12-2016 Peer Fischer wins World Technology Award 2016 Dr. Peer Fischer, head of the Micro- Nano- and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Professor of Physical Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, has received the World Technology Award 2016. Professor Fischer was selected among 32 nominees and then among six finalists in the category “Information Technology – Hardware” that recognizes achievements in the field of IT hardware, including such significant subcategories as manufacturing and robotics. Peer Fischer

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 20-12-2016 Peer Fischer has received the 2016 World Technology Award for IT Hardware. Together with his group, he has developed new 3D nanofabrication methods and nanorobots, made the first reciprocal microswimmer, and realized the first swimming soft microrobot that moves using only body shape changes.

Award 15-12-2016 Joachim P. Spatz: has been honored with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Award 2017 of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

News 15-12-2016 Go-ahead for Cyber Valley Science and industry form one of Europe's largest research partnerships in artificial intelligence Intelligent systems will shape our future: they could drive us as autonomous cars, help us out in the home on a daily basis or perform medical services as tiny robots. An initiative by the Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in the Stuttgart-Tübingen area is bringing together partners from science and industry to establish Cyber Valley where systems can be developed that will be capable of performing such feats. Winfried Kretschmann, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, Theresia Bauer, Minister of Science in Baden-Württemberg and Martin Stratmann, President of the Max Planck Society, together with the other project participants, have launched the initiative on Thursday, 15 December 2016 in Stuttgart's Neues Schloss. Matthias Tröndle

Probabilistic Numerics News 13-12-2016 ICERM Seminar on Probabilistic Scientific Computing An upcoming workshop in June 2017 will explore applications of probabilistic numerics. Philipp Hennig

News 08-12-2016 Leibniz Prize 2017 for Joachim P. Spatz Max Planck Director awarded with most prestigious german funding prize Awards ceremony on 15 March 2017 in Berlin

Probabilistic Numerics News 03-12-2016 Dagstuhl Seminar on the Future of Learning with Kernels and Gaussian Processes A recent meeting at the Leibniz Centre for Computer Science highlights the ongoing significance of analytic nonparametric models for machine learning. Philipp Hennig

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 01-12-2016 Hyeon-Ho Jeong was awarded the MRS Gold Graduate Student Award for a presentation on Chiral Plasmonic Nanosensors at the 2016 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston.

Autonomous Motion News 17-11-2016 Finalist for the Best Interactive Session Paper at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids 2016) Brahayam Ponton Alexander Herzog Ludovic Righetti Stefan Schaal

Movement Generation and Control Award 17-11-2016 The paper "A Convex Model of Humanoid Momentum Dynamics for Multi-Contact Motion Generation" by Brahayam Ponton, Alexander Herzog, Stefan Schaal and Ludovic Righetti was Finalist for the Best Interactive Session Award at the 2016 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robotics. 10 finalists out of 283 submitted / 186 accepted papers.

Smart Nanoplasmonics News 09-11-2016 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics 2016 awarded to Laura Na Liu Laura Na Liu, Group Leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, and Professor at the Kirchhoff Institute of Physics, University of Heidelberg, is the recipient of the 2016 IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics for “outstanding contributions to Nanooptics, Nanophotonics, Nano plasmonics, and Metamaterials.” She is Associate Editor of Science Advances, and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of ACS Photonics. Laura Na Liu

Probabilistic Numerics News 01-11-2016 Summer School on Probabilistic Numerics in 2017 The Dobbiaco Summer School 2017 will be devoted to Probabilistic Numerics, and taught by Philipp Hennig & Mark Girolami. Philipp Hennig

Autonomous Motion News 28-10-2016 Finalist for Best Paper Award at the 4th RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICROM). Ludovic Righetti Alexander Herzog Majid Khadiv Stefan Schaal

Movement Generation and Control Award 27-10-2016 The paper "Stepping Stabilization Using a Combination of DCM Tracking and Step Adjustment" by Majid Khadiv, Sébastien Kleff, Alexander Herzog, Ali Moosavian, Stefan Schaal and Ludovic Righetti was Finalist for the Best Paper Award at the 4th RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (ICROM).

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.

Award 16-10-2016 Prof. Dr.Ir. Eric J. Mittemeijer: has been announced as honorary member of the German Society for Materials Science e. V.

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

Perceiving Systems News 05-10-2016 Christoph Lassner in portrait #thatsmyscience Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (University of Tuebingen), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Christoph Lassner

News 30-09-2016 Motion-directed robots on a micro scale Microswimmers capped with carbon on one side can be propelled and steered by light Phototactic behaviour directs some bacteria towards light and others into darkness: This enables them to utilize solar energy as efficiently as possible for their metabolism, or, otherwise, protects them from excessive light intensity. A team of researchers headed by Clemens Bechinger from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart, as well as colleagues from the University of Düsseldorf have now found a surprisingly simple way to direct synthetic microswimmers towards light or darkness. Their findings could eventually lead to minuscule robots that seek out and treat lesions in the human body.

Physical Intelligence News 26-09-2016 Shape-programmable miniscule robots Soft materials that can use magnetic fields to generate desired time-varying shapes could provide an engine for microswimmers One day, microrobots may be able to swim through the human body like sperm or paramecia to carry out medical functions in specific locations. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have developed functional elastomers, which can be activated by magnetic fields to imitate the swimming gaits of natural flagella, cilia and jellyfish. Using a specially developed computer algorithm, the researchers can now automatically generate the optimal magnetic conditions for each gait for the first time. According to the Stuttgart-based scientists, other applications for this shape-programming technology include numerous other micro-scale engineering applications, in which chemical and physical processes are implemented on a miniscule scale. Metin Sitti Guo Zhan Lum

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 21-09-2016 Holograms with sound A new way of shaping sound waves in 3D aids technology and could be useful for medical ultrasound applications Sound can now be structured in three dimensions. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart have found a way of generating acoustic holograms, which could improve ultrasound diagnostics and material testing. The holograms can also be used to move and manipulate particles. Peer Fischer Kai Melde Andrew Mark

Perceiving Systems Award 12-09-2016 Highly cited article: "A Quantitative Analysis of Current Practices in Optical Flow Estimation and the Principles Behind Them" by Deqing Sun, Stefan Roth, and Michael Black, is cited by Thompson Reuters as one of three highly cited articles published in the Int. J. of Computer Vision (IJCV) since 2014.

News 09-09-2016 Tuebingen is a great Research City! (Video) Video: Research needs Future. One of Germany’s oldest and most renowned universities and a wide range of top-level research institutes. Together, they make Tuebingen an ideal place for science and research. They have joined forces in the Tuebingen Research Campus to further intensify their cooperation and to offer joint services to scientists interested in joining us.

Probabilistic Numerics News 26-08-2016 NIPS workshop: Optimizing the Optimizer contributions invited Maren Mahsereci and Philipp Hennig are co-organizing a NIPS workshop (with Alex Davies at Google) on parameter inference for nonlinear optimization algorithms. Maren Mahsereci Philipp Hennig

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".

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 10-08-2016 Congratulations Debora Walker receives a Humboldt Postdoctoral fellowship to go to Harvard (August 2016). Debora Schamel

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 05-08-2016 ERC Grant We are awarded an ERC Proof of Concept Grant (August 2016). Peer Fischer

Probabilistic Numerics News 01-08-2016 Setting up the Max Planck Group on Probabilistic Numerics Max Planck Society funds focussed research program on uncertainty in computation Our research group will be funded as an independent entity within the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems from December 2016. An official set-up phase starts in September 2016. This also brings an end to our beloved status as an Emmy Noether group. Philipp Hennig

Perceiving Systems News 26-07-2016 Body Talk: A New Crowdshaping Technology Uses Words to Create Accurate 3D Body Models A breakthrough in our shared understanding, perception, and description of human body shape brings new alternatives to 3D body scanning ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA -- JULY 26, 2016 -- Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Texas at Dallas, revealed new crowdshaping technology at SIGGRAPH 2016 that creates accurate 3D body models from 2D photos using crowdsourced linguistic descriptions of body shape. The Body Talk system takes a single photo and produces 3D body shapes that look like the person and are accurate enough to size clothing. It does this using the help of 15 volunteers who rate the body shape in the photo using 30 words or fewer. The researchers believe this technology has applications in online shopping, gaming, virtual reality and healthcare. Michael Black Stephan Streuber Maria Alejandra Quiros-Ramirez Silvia Zuffi

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

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