Sami Haddadin IEEE Fellow

We are thrilled to congratulate relAI fellow Prof. Sami Haddadin for his elevation to IEEE fellow. This is the highest membership degree of IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.  

This prestigious distinction was awarded to the director of the TUM Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) “for his contributions to robot safety, tactile robots, and interaction control”. 

Our Congratulations! 

Congratulations to relAI fellows Prof. Sandra Hirche and Prof. Claudia Eckert on receiving the prestigious 2023 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Medals from TUM.

We are excited that the TUM honors the exceptional achievements of Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sandra Hirche with the 2023 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Medals. This annual award of the TUM was presented to the relAI fellows at the recent Dies Academicus in December 2023.  

In the Laudati, Senior Vice President Prof. Gerhard Kramer acknowledged the outstanding contributions of Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert “at her chair at TUM and as head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security AISEC with the protection of IT systems against hacker attacks.” Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sandra Hirche was recognized for her “groundbreaking work” in control engineering and systems theory. 

A big congratulations to them both! These well-deserved awards are a testament to their dedication and impact in their respective fields, particularly to reliable AI.  

Please find more information about this prestigious price from TUM: https://www.tum.de/en/about-tum/facts-and-figures/awards-and-honors/awards-presented-by-the-technical-university-of-munich/heinz-maier-leibnitz-medal  

We are honored to announce that the Zuse Schools of Excellence in AI have been featured in the AI action plan of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (“BMBF-Aktionsplan Künstliche Intelligenz”)! 

This strategic plan aims to significantly advance AI research, development, and application in Germany. It emphasizes strengthening Germany’s position in the global AI landscape. This is done by enhancing research infrastructure and transfer, facilitating AI integration into various sectors such as healthcare, fostering a dialogue on the societal and ethical implications of AI and ensuring AI competencies at all levels in the long term. Notably, the BMBF has committed over 1.6 billion Euros to this AI action plan.  

Being explicitly named in this influential plan highlights the dedication of the three Zuse Schools including relAI, to fostering ethical, reliable AI innovations and preparing the next generation of AI leaders. 

A huge thank you to our supporters, partners, fellows, and students for making this milestone possible!  

Day 2 of the 2023 relAI retreat combined inspiring keynote talks by relAI fellows Sandra Hirche (“Learning Controls with Guarantees”) and Johannes Maly (“Implicit regularization of training algorithms and resource efficiency”) with more sessions of lightning talks and two rounds of group discussions, a new activity introduced for the first time during this year’s retreat.

The first group discussion session dealt with research topics suggested by fellows and students. The presentations of the discussions’ outcomes showed the intensity and depth with which these discussions had been conducted. The second round of discussions focused on relAI organizational topics such as the relAI Blog and Alumni and were very productive. They were presented on the last day of the retreat with amazing outcomes, including a newly founded student committee to coordinate the new relAI blog, and a student representative responsible for building a relAI alumni network. The election of new student representatives and IDP discussion sessions rounded off two very successful days.

Although the weather was very much November-like, everyone enjoyed the talks, fruitful discussions and social activities in this great location. The preparations for the next retreat have already started; it will take place in summer 2024 and we’re looking forward to gathering the relAI family again.

From November 16th to November 18th, the relAI family gathered at the Yachthotel Chiemsee for its second retreat.

The retreat started on the 16th with a warm opening by our two directors, Stephan Günnemann and Gitta Kutyniok. Afterwards, the relAI fellow Debarghya Ghoshdastidar gave the first keynote talk about “Over-parameterization and Over-fitting: Myths, theory and tools” followed by a very lively discussion around this topic.

Day One´s program concluded with a highlight of this year’s retreat, a round of lightning talks, where each of our students introduced themselves and their research focus in one minute. Spread over the two days of the retreat, the one minute presentations together with the social interactions resulted in everyone having a very good idea about what interests all the other students have.

Congratulations to our relAI director Gitta Kutyniok!

The world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity IEEE has selected Gitta Kutyniok for the elevation to IEEE Fellow, the highest grade of membership in IEEE. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected for this member grade elevation each year.

The IEEE Fellow Committee recognized her achievements with the following statement: “for contributions to the mathematical theory of artificial intelligence in signal processing and communication”

On the 11th and 12th of October, relAI welcomed the new cohort of relAI Master and Doctoral students. The event included informative sessions about relAI and networking activities. At the Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI), TUM, the relAI directors and coordinators presented the relAI program to the new students. The first relAI cohort of students organised a lively interactive session (photo) to welcome and get to know the new students.

Congratulations to the relAI PhD Student Lisa Wimmer, the relAI fellow Bernd Bischl, and the relAI director Stephan Günnemann on the best paper award of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2023).

ECML PKDD is Europe’s top machine learning and data mining conference, with over 20 years of successful events and conferences across the continent. The ECML PKDD 2023 was held in Turin, Italy from the 18th to the 22nd of September 2023.

List of authors and title of the awarded paper:Jonas Gregor Wiese, Lisa Wimmer, Theodore Papamarkou, Bernd Bischl, Stephan Günnemann, David Rügamer    
Towards Efficient MCMC Sampling in Bayesian Neural Networks by Exploiting Symmetry

On 14 September, the Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI, TUM) celebrated its official opening at the Science Congress Center in Garching. The event included inaugural words by the Bavarian State Minister for Science and the Arts, M. Blume, and the TUM President, Prof. Dr. T. Hofmann. Top-class scientific lectures from MDSI Members, presentations of outstanding MDSI projects, a panel discussion, and a poster session rounded the program. 

The Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Reliable AI (relAI), a joint project between TUM and LMU funded by DAAD, which had been initiated through an MDSI Focus Topic, was one of the projects highlighted at the opening. relAI Coordinator Dr. Andrea Schafferhans introduced relAI to the audience, giving an excellent overview of its educational and research programs as well as its people. relAI was also widely represented at the poster session by relAI Master students and PhD researchers from the TUM University, who discussed their research projects with the numerous guests of the event, among them, MDSI partners and representatives from industry and other research institutions.