News & Awards

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

Perceiving Systems News 24-06-2016 FAUST dataset wins the "Dataset Award" at the Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing 2016 The FAUST dataset wins the "Dataset Award" at the Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing 2016. The award encourages and recognises the importance of the distribution of high-quality datasets on which geometry processing algorithms are tested. Federica Bogo Javier Romero Matthew Loper Michael Black

Perceiving Systems Award 24-06-2016 The FAUST dataset was awarded the "Dataset Award" at the Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing 2016. The award encourages and recognises the importance of the distribution of high-quality datasets on which geometry processing algorithms are tested. The creators of the dataset are Federica Bogo, Javier Romero, Matthew Loper, and Michael Black. The work originally appeared in the IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2014.

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 20-06-2016 Humboldt fellowship Congratulations to Dr. Zhiguang Wu who has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers (June 2016). Zhiguang Wu

News 18-06-2016 Open Day - Tag der offenen Tür Max Planck Campus Tübingen Einblicke in die Labore, Experimente zum Mitmachen und ein Science Slam: Im Juni gibt es Forschung zum Anfassen Claudia Daefler

Award 15-06-2016 Hunter Gilbert receives a Humboldt Postdoctoral fellowship.

Award 15-06-2016 Xing Ma: receives the Günter Petzow Price 2016 for his outstanding research activities in the field of materials science.

Physical Intelligence Award 15-06-2016 Yunus Alapan and Hunter Gilbert received the Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship.

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

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 12-06-2016 Faculty position Congrats and good luck to Dr. Ji Tae Kim who has started as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (June 2016). JiKae Kim

Autonomous Motion News 01-06-2016 Finalist for WODES 2016 Best Student Paper Simon Ebner´s paper on the results of his master thesis Topic: "Communication rate analysis for event-based state estimation" Simon Ebner

Autonomous Motion Intelligent Control Systems Award 01-06-2016 Simon Ebner Finalist for WODES 2016 Best Student Paper for the paper "Communication Rate Analysis for Event-based State Estimation" co-authored with Sebastian Trimpe.

Perceiving Systems News 30-05-2016 A special kind of robot workshop (a nice story from last year) A Nao flies East and helps Laura Sevilla to teach technology knowledge to children from the Philippines Fascinated Kids with excited faces and curious voices, expressing happiness and thankfulness...- these emotions were raised by a little NAO robot that was the main actor of a robot workshop that took place in May 2015 in the Philippines. Laura Sevilla, a PostDoc at the MPI for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, took two months off and volunteered more than five weeks in order to organize and lead this workshop. Laura Sevilla

Autonomous Motion Movement Generation and Control News 18-05-2016 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Prize 2016 for Ludovic Righetti Medal-Marathon for Robotics Researcher Tübingen – Stockholm – Berlin – Stockholm – Tübingen; Ludovic Righetti receives within 24 hours two renowned prizes for young researchers for his outstanding science on movements of robots Ludovic Righetti

Physical Intelligence News 18-05-2016 Switch and stick The chemical element gallium could be used as a new reversible adhesive that allows its adhesive effect to be switched on and off with ease Some adhesives may soon have a metallic sheen and be particularly easy to unstick. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are suggesting gallium as just such a reversible adhesive. By inducing slight changes in temperature, they can control whether a layer of gallium sticks or not. This is based on the fact that gallium transitions from a solid state to a liquid state at around 30 degrees Celsius. A reversible adhesive of this kind could have applications everywhere that temporary adhesion is required, such as industrial pick-and-place processes, transfer printing, temporary wafer bonding, or for moving sensitive biological samples such as tissues and organs. Switchable adhesion could also be suitable for use on the feet of climbing robots. Metin Sitti Zhou Ye Guo Zhan Lum Sukho Song

Perceiving Systems News 13-05-2016 Michael J. Black Inducted as Foreign Member of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Dr. Black recognized for his leadership in advancing body modeling and computer vision sciences Body Labs (bodylabs.com), the provider of the world's most advanced technology for analyzing the human body's shape, pose and motion, announced today that Michael J. Black, Body Labs co-founder and board member, will be inducted as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Michael Black

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

News 29-04-2016 Tiny microbots that can clean up water Max Planck researchers have developed self-propelled tiny ‘microbots’ that can remove lead or organic pollutions from contaminated water. Working with colleagues in Barcelona and Singapore, Samuel Sanchez’s group used graphene oxide to make their microscale motors, which are able to adsorb lead from industrial wastewater from a level of 1000 parts-per-billion to down to below 50 parts-per-billion in just an hour. The lead can later be removed for recycling, and the micromotors can be used over and over again. Sámuel Sánchez

News 12-04-2016 Flow at the nanoscale: what stops a drop and keeps nanobubbles alive Max Planck researchers from Stuttgart present first model calculation All of us have seen it: a raindrop running down the windowpane. It stops at a certain point, is met by a second raindrop and the two join up before continuing to run down the pane. Very small irregularities or dirt on the windowpane appear to stop the course of the raindrops. If the surface was entirely smooth and chemically clean, the raindrops would be able to flow unhindered. Surface defects such as small bumps and dimples as well as chemical contaminants stop the liquid drops. These are everyday phenomena everyone knows and can observe with the naked eye. Lothar Schimmele Alberto Giacomello Siegfried Dietrich

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 05-04-2016 Tian Qiu has been granted the “National Award for Outstanding Self-financed Chinese Students Abroad 2015” by the China Scholarship Council (April, 2016).

News 02-04-2016 2+1 is Not Always 3 In the microworld unity is not always strength If a person pushes a broken-down car alone, there is a certain effect. If another person helps, the result is the sum of their efforts. If two micro-particles are pushing another microparticle, however, the resulting effect may not necessarily be the sum their efforts. A recent study published in Nature Communications, measured this odd effect that scientists call “many body.” Siegfried Dietrich

Autonomous Motion Movement Generation and Control Award 31-03-2016 Ludovic Righetti receives the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2016. It is awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is considered the most prestigious award in Germany for early career researchers across all disciplines who have established an independent scientific career since having gained their doctorates.

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 16-03-2016 Featured Nature Materials article Our article on soft microrobots is discussed in Nature News & Views. Stefano Palagi Andrew Mark Kai Melde Tian Qiu Alberto Sanchez Peer Fischer

Physical Intelligence News 13-03-2016 Gentle strength for robots A soft actuator using electrically controllable membranes could pave the way for machines that are no danger to humans In interacting with humans, robots must first and foremost be safe. If a household robot, for example, encounters a human, it should not continue its movements regardless, but rather give way in case of doubt. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are now presenting a motion system - a so-called elastic actuator - that is compliant and can be integrated in robots thanks to its space-saving design. The actuator works with hyperelastic membranes that surround air-filled chambers. The volume of the chambers can be controlled by means of an electric field at the membrane. To date, elastic actuators that exert a force by stretching air-filled chambers have always required connection to pumps and compressors to work. A soft actuator such as the one developed by the Stuttgart-based team means that such bulky payloads or tethers may now be superfluous. Metin Sitti Lindsey Hines Kirstin Petersen

Smart Nanoplasmonics News 23-02-2016 Nano-hinge – lubricated by light A nanoplasmonic system of DNA bundles can be opened and closed by optical means Nanomachines could take over a variety of tasks in future. Some day they may be able to perform medical precision work in the human body or help analyze pathogens and pollutants in mobile laboratories. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have now presented a possible component which could be used to specifically move and control such a machine. They have developed a nanoplasmonic system in the form of a pair of scissors that they can open using UV light. As soon as they irradiate the nanostructure with visible instead of UV light, it closes again. The researchers can observe the structural changes with the aid of gold particles which they excite with the light. Laura Na Liu

Perceiving Systems News 19-02-2016 Cordelia Schmid receives the Humboldt Research Award Cordelia Schmid, an Inria research director, has received the Humboldt Research Award for her work on computer vision spanning more than 20 years. She was nominated for this scientific award by Michael Black, the director of the Perceiving Systems department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany. As the director of the LEAR team and then the Thoth team since 1 January 2016, Cordelia Schmid is particularly interested in visual recognition linking invariant image descriptors with learning methods. Her research enables a computer to learn not only to interpret all types of real images and videos, but also to recognize objects, actions and places by learning large image and video bases containing more than 100 million images. Cordelia Schmid figures among the world’s precursors and leaders in the field of modern visual recognition methods; she is also named in the “Highly Cited Researchers 2015” list (source: Thomson Reuters). Michael Black

News 17-02-2016 Micromotors use surface variations for docking and guiding Researchers reveal that micromotors can be guided using tiny topographical patterns on the surfaces over which they swim. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the University of Stuttgart have revealed in an article in Nature Communications that micromotors can be guided using tiny topographical patterns on the surfaces over which they swim. Sámuel Sánchez

Autonomous Motion Movement Generation and Control News 05-02-2016 2016 RAS Early Career Award (Academic) for Ludovic Righetti, Group Leader AM Department recognizing "his contributions to the theory of, and experiments in, robot locomotion and manipulation". Ludovic Righetti

Autonomous Motion Movement Generation and Control Award 05-02-2016 Ludovic Righetti receives the IEEE-RAS Early Career Award (Academic) for "his contributions to the theory of, and experiments in, robot locomotion and manipulation". It is awarded by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society to “individuals in the early stage of their career who have made an identifiable contribution or contributions which have had a major impact on the robotics and/or automation fields”.

Autonomous Motion News 14-01-2016 Roboter machen Schule - Robots set standards Autonomous Robots made in Tübingen Als Haushaltshilfe, Pflegeassistent oder Katastrophenschützer taugen Roboter nur, wenn sie lernfähig sind und zumindest ansatzweise selbstständig handeln können. Stefan Schaal und die Mitarbeiter seiner Abteilung am Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme in Tübingen bringen den Maschinen diese Flexibilität und Autonomie bei. Sebastian Trimpe Ludovic Righetti Jeannette Bohg Stefan Schaal

Perceiving Systems Autonomous Vision News 07-01-2016 Autos gehen die Augen auf - Cars open their Eyes Perception is essential for Intelligence Einen Wagen mit Chauffeur könnte es irgendwann für jeden geben, wenn nämlich ein Roboter das Steuer übernimmt. Damit Autos auch ohne großen technischen Aufwand autonom fahren können, müssen Computer unübersichtliche Verkehrssituation jedoch mindestens genauso gut beurteilen wie der Mensch. Andreas Geiger Michael Black Joel Janai Osman Ulusoy

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2016 Alex Sprowitz joined Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems as an independent group leader in Stuttgart, Germany.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2016 Kirstin Petersen joined Cornell University as an assistant professor in USA.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2016 Wenqi Hu and Hunter Gilbert received the Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship.

Physical Intelligence Award 01-01-2016 Zeinab Hosseini joined McMaster University as an assistant professor in Canada.

Perceiving Systems News 16-12-2015 Middlebury Dataset awarded 2015 IEEE Mark Everingham Prize The 2015 PAMI Mark Everingham Prize was awarded to the Middlebury Dataset (Daniel Scharstein, Richard Szeliski, and team) for a series of datasets and on-line evaluations, starting with the Stereo datasets in 2001, and extending to Optical Flow, MRF and others, which have inspired many other datasets. Michael Black was part of the team behind the Optical Flow dataset and evaluation. Michael Black

Perceiving Systems Award 16-12-2015 The Middlebury Dataset was awarded the 2015 IEEE Mark Everingham Prize for service and contributions to the computer vision community. Michael Black was part of the team behind the optical flow benchmark.

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

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 11-12-2015 Per Mikroschwimmer zur Magenwand Ein mit Enzymen beschichteter Mikropropeller verflüssigt lokal die Magenschleimhaut, um sie zu durchdringen Helicobacter pylori macht es vor. Das im menschlichen Magen häufig vorkommende Bakterium versteht es, sich auch durch die zähe Magenschleimhaut hindurchzubewegen. Zu diesem Zweck scheidet es Substanzen aus, die den pH-Wert ihrer Umgebung verändern und damit den gelartigen Schleim verflüssigen. Forscher des Max-Planck-Instituts für Intelligente Systeme in Stuttgart haben dieses Prinzip aufgegriffen und nach ihm ein künstliches Mikrovehikel geschaffen, das ebenfalls viskose Schleimhäute durchdringen kann. Die Forscher verbinden damit eine konkrete Hoffnung: Eines Tages könnten solche Schwimmer vielleicht pharmazeutische Wirkstoffe direkt an die Magenwand transportieren – und dort für eine effektive Aufnahme in die Blutbahn sorgen. Debora Schamel Peer Fischer Jeong Hyeon-Ho

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

Probabilistic Numerics News 01-12-2015 NIPS Oral for Maren Mahsereci PhD student will present her work on optimization for deep learning Maren Mahsereci's paper on probabilistic line searches for stochastic optimization has been selected for a full oral presentation at the flagship conference of machine learning. Maren Mahsereci Philipp Hennig

News 30-11-2015 Inauguration of the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems Inauguration Ceremony in Tübingen (From left to right): Prof. Dr. Bradley Nelson (ETH Zürich), Dr. Stefan Schaal (MPI for Intelligent Systems), Christine Schraner Burgener (Swiss Ambassador to Germany), Prof. Dr. Lino Guzella (President ETH Zürich), Prof. Dr. Martin Stratmann (President Max Planck Society), Theresia Bauer (Science Minister of Baden-Württemberg), Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schölkopf MPI for Intelligent Systems and Co-Director of the CLS), Prof. Dr. Thomas Hofmann (ETH Zürich, Co-Director of the CLS).

Perceiving Systems Award 20-11-2015 Jonas Wulff. Outstanding Reviewer Award. ICCV 2015.

News 11-11-2015 Learning Control Workshop Researchers from ETH Zürich and MPI for Intelligent Systems come together to exchange ideas and discuss challenges for Learning Control Albeit Learning Control is not uniquely defined, we understand Learning Control as the rather broad research area that lies at the intersection of Machine Learning and Automatic Control. This includes, but is not limited to data-driven approaches for control design, adaptive control, dual control, machine learning for control, online learning, active learning for control, reinforcement learning, and applications of learning control. Ludovic Righetti Sebastian Trimpe Melanie Zeilinger

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

Award 28-10-2015 Barbara Haller: 1st Prize at the "Thesis in Three" Competition in the PhD category

Physical Intelligence Award 28-10-2015 Chantal Göttler: 1st Prize at the "Thesis in Three" Competition in the M.Sc. category.

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