News & Awards

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 1 minute read 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

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 01-05-2021 Vincent Kadiri has won Best Oral Award for his talk at the 2021 MRS Spring meeting.

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 01-05-2021 Best Oral Presentation Congratulations - Vincent Kadiri has won Best Oral Award for his talk entitled “Materials for Magnetically Actuated Micro- and Nanorobots” which he gave at the 2021 MRS Spring meeting. His presentation has been selected by the meeting chairs. Vincent Mauricio Kadiri

Robust Machine Learning Award 01-05-2021 Emmy Noether Fellowship Wieland Brendel receives an Emmy Noether Fellowship

Rationality Enhancement News 30-04-2021 Nisha Tyagi joined our lab! Welcome, Nisha! Nisha Tyagi

Physical Intelligence News 29-04-2021 A modular building platform for the most ingenious of robots Playground of new possibilities arises in constructing miniature soft-bodied machines A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have developed a system with which they can fabricate miniature robots building block by building block, which function exactly as required. Jiachen Zhang Ziyu Ren Wenqi Hu Ren Hao Soon Immihan Ceren Yasa Zemin Liu Metin Sitti

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 22-04-2021 Eunjin Choi wins in "Science as Art" at the 2021 MRS Spring Meeting The depicted Art piece by Eunjin Choi is called "Snowman-village" and is based on an SEM image adapted from research published in ACS Nano “Arrays of plasmonic nanoparticle dimers with defined nanogap spacers”. It won 2nd place at this year's 2021 MRS Spring Meeting. More information can be found following the link provided by the MRS. Congratulations, Eunjin! EunJin Choi

Physical Intelligence News 19-04-2021 MPI-IS participates in the Max Planck-University of Toronto Centre for Neural Science and Technology Metin Sitti to cooperate with neurosurgeons to use his miniature robots as new tools in neurological diseases Better therapies for diseases such as dementia or Parkinson's, as well as more powerful computers and new artificial intelligence technologies – these are the goals scientists will pursue at the Max Planck-University of Toronto-Centre for Neural Science and Technolgy. The center was officially inaugurated on April 14, 2021, in a virtual event with many prominent guests. Metin Sitti, Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, also attended. Metin Sitti

Haptic Intelligence Award 07-04-2021 Ph.D. students Alexis E. Block, Rachael Bevill Burns, and Mayumi Mohan are selected to participate in the Gordon Research Seminar on the Future of Robotics: Possibilities for Transforming Healthcare Alexis Block Rachael Burns Mayumi Mohan

Haptic Intelligence News 06-04-2021 Challenging the design of electrovibrations to generate a more realistic feel A user should feel realistic haptic feedback on a touchscreen embedded with electrovibration technology – independent of the number of fingers used, the movements made, or the pressure applied to the screen. Unfortunately, not even the most advanced touchscreen devices provide a realistic user experience – all images feel like glass. In the near future, a completely rethought design of the electrical signals causing the haptic sensation could close the gap between reality and fiction. In an experiment, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Delft University of Technology laid the foundation for rethinking the design approach, generating more compelling tactile sensations on touchscreens, and improving the usability of mobile devices. Yasemin Vardar Katherine J. Kuchenbecker

Perceiving Systems Award 31-03-2021 Michael Black is elected to the German National Academy of Science Leopoldina.

Neural Capture and Synthesis News 29-03-2021 Making the virtual world even more realistic The MPI-IS gains an expert for capture and synthesis Capturing the real world, synthesizing, and realistically modeling people, objects, and rooms so that a viewer no longer notices the difference – Justus Thies has set himself ambitious goals for the coming five years. His research has already made a significant contribution to making video content more photorealistic. This comes with a huge responsibility. As facial reenactment is continuously improved, it is increasingly difficult to detect deep fakes, for instance. By gaining knowledge about the creation process, Thies aims to put a strong emphasis on designing more advanced forgery detection algorithms that can recognize and flag fake video content automatically and reliably.

Learning and Dynamical Systems News 26-03-2021 “We’d like to make complex dynamical systems better able to adapt to changing conditions” Michael Mühlebach recently joined MPI-IS as leader of the independent Learning and Dynamical Systems research group Mühlebach’s research is supported by the prestigious Branco Weiss and Emmy Noether Fellowships Michael Muehlebach Valerie Callaghan

Rationality Enhancement News 18-03-2021 Nishad Singhi joined our lab! Welcome, Nishad! Nishad Singhi

Locomotion in Biorobotic and Somatic Systems News 18-03-2021 Underwater swimming robot responds with feedback from soft lateral line A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Germany, from Seoul National University in Korea and from Harvard University in the US, successfully developed a predictive model and closed-loop controller of a soft robotic fish, designed to actively adjust its undulation amplitude to changing flow conditions and other external disturbances. Ardian Jusufi Yu-Hsiang Lin Hritwick Banerjee Toshihiko Fukushima Fabian Schwab Robert Siddall

Rationality Enhancement News 16-03-2021 Congratulations to Gabriela Iwama and Falk Lieder on publishing! "Toward a formal theory of proactivity" is now online! Gabriela Iwama Falk Lieder

Physical Intelligence News 16-03-2021 Metin Sitti and his team finalists for the 2020 Cozzarelli Prize The highly prestigious annual Cozzarelli Prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Winners and finalists are chosen among articles that appeared in the journal last year in the six broadly defined classes under which the NAS is organized. Additionally, the Editorial Board has recognized six papers – one in each class – as finalists for the 2020 Cozzarelli Prize. Metin Sitti Hamed Shahsavan Amirreza Aghakhani Yubing Guo Zoey Davidson

Dynamic Locomotion News 15-03-2021 Bernadett Kiss joins DLG New group member Bernadett Kiss becomes new Dynamic Locomotion Group member. Bernadett Kiss

Empirical Inference News 12-03-2021 Teilnehmende für COVID-19 Studie gesucht Künstliche Intelligenz soll Früherkennung eines schweren Krankheitsverlaufs ermöglichen Bernhard Schölkopf Annika Buchholz Stefan Bauer

Haptic Intelligence Award 11-03-2021 Ph.D. student Rachael Bevill Burns wins first place at the HRI 2021 Student Elevator Pitch Competition Rachael Burns

Physical Intelligence News 08-03-2021 Jaekang Kim 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 bio-inspired adhesive research in Germany Jaekang Kim Metin Sitti

Rationality Enhancement News 08-03-2021 Our article on computational models of goal pursuit received positive reviews "Resource-Rational Models of Human Goal Pursuit" Benjamin Prystawski Florian Mohnert Mateo Tosic Falk Lieder

Physical Intelligence Appointment 01-03-2021 Donghoon Son was appointed Assistant Professor at the Pusan National University

Physical Intelligence Appointment 01-03-2021 Sungwoo Chun will become Assistant Professor at Korea University

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 01-03-2021 Vincent Kadiri receives Alfred Landecker Democracy Fellowship Vincent Mauricio Kadiri was recently selected as one of 30 rising activists, community leaders, and young professionals to join the Alfred Landecker Democracy Fellowship! The tagline guiding the Alfred Landecker Democracy Fellowship's inaugural cohort is "Reinventing Democratic Spaces in Times of COVID-19". It is funded through Humanity in Action in partnership with the Alfred Landecker Foundation. With the funding granted through the project, he will spend the coming months building a grassroots science communication network of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) working in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The name "Na’egbia Iyese" is Etsako and can be translated as „Good Morning Knowledge“. Through this initiative, he hopes to inspire especially Youth of Color to join academia and follow their passion for science by shining the spotlight on the kinds of diverse role models he and many other Scientists of Color often did not have growing up. The website and social media accounts were all launched recently, and if you have questions or want to join and/or support Na’egbia Iyese in any way, then please feel free to contact Vincent (https://naegbia-iyese.org/)! In addition he has received a Mercator Fellowship on International affairs which will allow him to investigate decolonial approaches to scientific collaboration and research. This prestigious program selects 25 young professionals and provides them with funding to work on a self-selected project in international organizations, NGOs, and think tanks for a year. Congratulations, Vincent.

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