News & Awards

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 01-08-2014 Congratulations Tung-Chun (John) Lee will leave the group and move to a faculty position at University College London, where he will start his own group in the Center for Materials Discovery. (August 2014) Tung Chun Lee

Smart Nanoplasmonics News 21-07-2014 DNA used as a lightswitch A nanostructure made from two tiny gold rods reversibly changes its optical properties when specific DNA molecules are added Electronics now has a competitor. Information is increasingly being transmitted and processed by means of light rather than electrons. And just as has happened to electronic components, their photonic counterparts are to shrink to nanoformat. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich, and Ohio University in Athens, USA, have developed a switch for nano-optics. Two gold nanorods are the key players here. If the angle between them changes, certain optical properties of the nano-lightswitch also change. The researchers control the angle itself by means of molecules which in living nature are the carriers of genetic information: DNA. Laura Na Liu

Empirical Inference Award 01-07-2014 Carl-Johann Simon-Gabriel: Google European Doctorate Fellowship 2014-2016

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 01-07-2014 Welcome We welcome three new postdocs to the group: Piotr Garbacz, Jérome Roche, and Dhruv Singh. Piotr Garbacz Jerome Roche Dhruv Pratap Singh

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 22-06-2014 Smallest Chemical Nanomotor and Smallest Nanopropeller published We have published a paper about synthetic chemical nanomotors with an overall size (30 nm) that is comparable to that of some enzymes (Nano Lett., 2014, 14 (5), pp 2407–2412), as well as nanopropellers that are small enough to navigate complex biological networks (diameter of 70 nm), yet can be fully controlled (ACS Nano, Article ASAP, DOI: 10.1021/nn502360t). Tung Chun Lee John Gibbs Andrew Mark Mariana Alarcon-Correa Debora Schamel Cornelia Miksch Peer Fischer

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 09-06-2014 Featured Cover Article Our paper "Nanopropellers and Their Actuation in Complex Viscoelastic Media“ is the cover article for ACS Nano 8, 8794–8801, (2014). In addition the ACS Nano September 2014 podcast features our work. News sites and blogs report our work as "world’s smallest propeller“. (September 2014) Image by Alejandro Posada Boada. Debora Schamel Andrew Mark John Gibbs Cornelia Miksch Peer Fischer Alejandro Posada

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems Award 07-06-2014 Paper award: Tian Qiu, Debora Schamel, Andrew G. Mark, and Peer Fischer's paper "Active Microrheology of the Vitreous of the Eye applied to Nanorobot Propulsion" is the "Best Automation Paper Award - Finalist" of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation - ICRA 2014. (June 2014)

Award 06-06-2014 Peter A. van Aken: 1. Poster Award

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 21-05-2014 Cover Article Our paper “Shape control in wafer-based aperiodic 3D nanostructures” is the cover article for Nanotechnology 25 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/25/23/235302. (June, 2014). Jeong Hyeon-Ho Andrew Mark John Gibbs Peer Fischer

Physical Intelligence News 21-05-2014 Metin Sitti becomes new director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has appointed Metin Sitti as a new director at the institute’s Stuttgart location. There, Sitti will head the Physical Intelligence Department. One of the main goals of his research will be to obtain a new understanding of physically intelligent systems made of smart and soft materials. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence News 05-05-2014 Congratulations To our alumni Yigit Menguc, Onur Ozcan, and Rika Wright Carlsen on their new faculty positions. Yigit has accepted a position at Oregon State University, Onur has accepted a position at Bilkent University, and Rika has accepted a position at Robert Morris University. Metin Sitti

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 01-05-2014 Congratulations/Welcome John Gibbs will leave the group and move to a faculty position in Arizona where he will start his own group as a Prof in Physics; Marcel Pfeifer passed his Ph.D. exam – congratulations to both. Welcome to Prof. J.P. Singh from IIT Delhi who is a sabbatical visitor. (May, 2014). John Gibbs

Award 28-04-2014 Ilia Platzman: Günter Petzow Preis 2014

News 28-04-2014 Dr. Ilia Platzman awarded with Günter Petzow Prize 2014 Young scientist honored for outstanding research in the field of material science Ilia Platzman will receive this year’s Günter Petzow Award from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. He will be honored for the exploration of the capacity of microfluidic techniques and material sciences in synthetic biology.

Physical Intelligence News 07-04-2014 Our lab's work Our lab's work on self-cleaning gecko adhesive is featured as a picture of the week by the science news website Science Friday. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence News 03-04-2014 Congratulations Congratulations to NanoRobotics Lab alumnus TaeWon Seo and Professor Sitti on winning the 2013 IEEE/ASME Best Mechatronics Paper Award. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence News 12-03-2014 Newsweek Professor Sitti discusses novel gecko-inspired tape with Newsweek. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence Award 26-02-2014 Metin Sitti became an IEEE Fellow due to contributions to micro- and nano-scale robotic systems.

Smart Nanoplasmonics News 20-02-2014 Laura Na Liu awarded with Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Prize Nanoscientist receives important award for young academics Laura Na Liu

Physical Intelligence News 10-02-2014 Congratulations Our lab's collaborative work is covered as featured research by Science Daily. Metin Sitti

Smart Nanoplasmonics Award 07-02-2014 Laura Na Liu: Maier-Leibnitz-Preis der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft

Physical Intelligence Award 05-02-2014 Eric Diller, Zhou Ye, Guo Zhan Lum, Joshua Giltinan and Metin Sitti were selected as the Best Paper Award Finalist in the Robotics Science and Systems Conference due to the paper on novel six degrees-of-freedom actuation method for mobile magnetic microrobots.

Physical Intelligence Award 05-02-2014 Matthew Woodward and Metin Sitti: Top 5 Most Read Papers of 2014 of the International Journal of Robotics Research journal for the paper entitled, "MultiMo-Bat: Biologically Inspired Integrated Jumping-Gliding Robot".

Physical Intelligence News 01-02-2014 Fellow Professor Sitti is named as IEEE Fellow. Metin Sitti

Physical Intelligence News 28-01-2014 Collaborative work Our lab's collaborative work on "Untethered microrobotic coding of three-dimensional material composition" with Harvard Medical School (Prof. Utkan Demirci) is published in Nature Communications. Metin Sitti

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 24-01-2014 Guest Editor Peer Fischer is guest editor for the Nanoscale themed issue on “Helical Micro- and Nanostructures” (Nanoscale, 2014). Peer Fischer

Physical Intelligence News 15-01-2014 Good luck Our lab's recent graduate Dr. Eric Diller will be an assistant professor at the University of Toronto (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department) from January 2014. Metin Sitti

Autonomous Motion Award 02-01-2014 Stefan Schaal : IEEE Fellow 2014

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 Bernhard Schölkopf: Royal Society Milner Award 2014

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 Moritz Grosse-Wentrup and Daniel Braun: Teaching Award Winter & Summer Term 2013/14 at Graduate School of Neural Information Processing, University of Tübingen

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 A. Abdolmaleki (Universidade de Aveiro), N. Lau (Universidade de Aveiro), G. Neumann(TU Darmstadt), J. Peters, 1st Place at the 3D Free Challenge of the RoboCup 2014.

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 M. Deisenroth (TU Darmstadt), P. Englert (Uni Stuttgart), J. Peters, D. Fox (U. Washington), IROS Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 O. Kroemer (TU Darmstadt), H. van Hoof (TU Darmstadt), G. Neumann(TU Darmstadt), J. Peters, IROS Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award Finalist

Empirical Inference Award 01-01-2014 Sebastian Weichwald and Timm Meyer best student paper award at the 4th International Workshop on Cognitive Information Processing (CIP 2014) for the paper: Decoding Index Finger Position From EEG Using Random Forests published with Bernhard Schölkopf, Tonio Ball, and Moritz Grosse-Wentrup.

Perceiving Systems Award 06-12-2013 Michael J. Black: ICCV Helmholtz Prize 2013

News 05-12-2013 The geometry of cancer cells Malignant and healthy cells display characteristic fractal patterns, which can be used to tell them apart new approach has given rise to the hope for a faster and more reliable method for determining cancer cell types. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart and the University of Heidelberg found that cells can be very accurately characterised using fractal geometry. This theory describes objects whose minute structural details resemble their larger contours. Cancer cells are not able to regulate their growth and, as a consequence their shape, as effectively as healthy cells. The particular fractal geometry of a cell therefore becomes a marker of the cell type. Using this mathematical method in combination with sophisticated image recognition, it is possible to establish the progression of cancer in a cell. The researchers studied the statistical distribution of the occurrence of structural details on the surface of different tumour cells, and were thus able to identify cancer cells with more accuracy than when using the conventional immunohistological method. Moreover, they were able to distinguish between different tumours.

Perceiving Systems News 01-12-2013 Michael Black awarded 2013 Helmholtz Prize 2013 Helmholtz Prize honors Michael J. Black's work on robust optical flow estimation described in the ICCV 1993 paper with P. Anandan on "A framework for the robust estimation of optical flow." Michael Black

Empirical Inference News 01-12-2013 NIPS 2013 outstanding paper award Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez, Department Empirical Inference (Prof. Schölkopf), received an outstanding paper award at NIPS 2013. Manuel Gomez Rodriguez

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 18-11-2013 Cover Article Our paper on “Plasmonic nanohelix metamaterials with tailorable giant circular dichroism” is the featured cover article for the Applied Physics Letters Issue 21, vol. 103, 18 November 2013. John Gibbs Andrew Mark Sahand Eslami Peer Fischer

Physical Intelligence News 02-11-2013 National Science Foundation Our lab alumnus Prof. Seok Kim at UIUC will receive the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his research and educational activities on microassembly using transfer printing. Metin Sitti

Autonomous Motion News 01-11-2013 Stefan Schaal elected IEEE Fellow 2014 For his contributions to robot learning and modular motion planning. Stefan Schaal

Empirical Inference News 29-10-2013 2013 Young Investigator Award der International Neural Networks Society für Prof. Jan Peters Preis für entscheidende Beiträge im Bereich der Neuronalen Netzwerke Tübingen. Prof. Ph.D. Jan Peters, Leiter des „Robot-Learning-Labs“ am MPI für Intelligente Systeme, ist mit dem 2013 Young Investigator Award der International Neural Network Society ausgezeichnet worden. Peters hat den Preis erhalten für seine entscheidenden Beiträge im Bereich der Neuronalen Netzwerke, insbesondere zur Entwicklung neuer Lernmethoden, die es Robotern erlauben, neue Fähigkeiten zur Bewegung zu lernen. Jan Peters

News 23-09-2013 Summer School "Maschinelles Lernen für Personalisierte Medizin" An der Schnittstelle zwischen Maschinellem Lernen und Statistischer Genetik Tübingen. Vom 23. Bis 27. September 2013 besuchen rund 70 Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer die „Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine“ (MLPM) Summer School am Max-Planck-Campus Tübingen. Maschinelles Lernen entwickelt sich zur Schlüsseldisziplin zur Bewältigung riesiger Datenmengen – unter anderem in der Biologie und Medizin. Bisher mangelt es aber an Fachkräften in diesem Bereich. Das EU-geförderte und von Prof. Dr. Karsten Borgwardt koordinierte MLPM-Projekt bildet in den kommenden drei Jahren international 14 Nachwuchswissenschaftler an der Schnittstelle von Maschinellem Lernen und Statistischer Genetik aus. Sie sollen künftig dazu beitragen, entscheidende Hindernisse für die personalisierte Medizin zu bewältigen. Karsten Borgwardt Matthias Tröndle

Perceiving Systems Award 10-09-2013 Gerard Pons-Moll: BMVC 2013 Best Science Paper for Metric Regression Forests for Human Pose Estimation with Jonathan Taylor, Jamie Shotton, Aaron Hertzmann and Andrew Fitzgibbon.

News 28-08-2013 MLSS 2013 - Machine Learning Summer School in Tübingen Über 100 Nachwuchswissenschaftler aus aller Welt treffen auf 26 Experten ihres Fachs Tübingen. Seit 11 Jahren tourt die Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) um die Welt, vom 26. August bis 6. September 2013 gastiert diese begehrte wissenschaftliche Veranstaltung in Tübingen. Gastgeber für die 100 Teilnehmer ist der Tübinger Standort des Max-Planck-Instituts für Intelligente Systeme. Die MLSS präsentiert die wichtigsten Themen des maschinellen Lernens, von fundamentalen Dingen bis zu den neuesten Anwendungen. 26 Experten ihres Fachs halten Vorlesungen und vermitteln Wissen in praktischen Übungen. Dazu zählen Vertreter von namhaften Firmen wie Google, Amazon, Microsoft Research, Sony und Zeiss sowie von renommierten Universitäten wie Oxford und Cambridge.

News 26-08-2013 Joint exploration of learning systems Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH Zurich found research network The Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich have launched a research network in the research field of learning systems. The network will enable scientists from the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems, with sites in Stuttgart and Tübingen, to collaborate with their Swiss colleagues, and vice versa. Within the scope of this network, the scientists are conducting joint research projects and will hold joint conferences and workshops. They will also have easier access to each other’s research facilities. The cooperation, which started in August, is slated for the next three years. Bernhard Schölkopf Michael Black Stefan Schaal

Micro, Nano, and Molecular Systems News 13-08-2013 Designing and building nanocomponents to spec Hybrid, multifunctional nanostructures with diverse 3D shapes and complex material composition can now be manufactured with a precise and efficient fabrication technique The realisation of nanomachines is inching ever closer to reality. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are helping make one of the grand challenges of nanoscience become reality. They have developed a method that makes it possible to manufacture an assortment of unusually shaped and functionalisable nanostructures. It lets them combine materials with widely varying chemical and physical properties at the smallest of scales. The team of scientists headed by Peer Fischer have even grown helical light antennas that are less than 100nm in length from materials which can typically not be shaped at the nanoscale. This is achieved by vapour depositing the material onto a super-cooled rotating disk. Not only does the process allow for the fabrication of nanostructures more exactly than previous methods, several billion of such nanoparticles can be produced in parallel in a rapid manner. Peer Fischer Andrew Mark

News 22-07-2013 It’s the fineness of the grind In nanomaterials, the structure of the individual crystals changes with grain size The properties of nanomaterials could be easier to predict in future. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have ground metal into continuously finer powders in steps and prepared a detailed catalogue of how the structure of the metal grains changes depending on grain size. They discovered that the crystal lattices initially shrink, but expand again below a certain threshold grain size. The arrangement and spacing of the atoms determine numerous properties of a material. If it is possible to accurately characterise crystal lattices as a function of the particle size, it may also be possible thereby to more accurately calculate how nanoparticles of a particular size behave.

Award 19-07-2013 Zumin Wang: Günter Petzow Prize 2013

Award 05-07-2013 Manfred Fähnle: Lecturer Award of the Department of Physics at the University of Stuttgart

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