relAI Fellow Daniel Rückert receives Leibniz Prize

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relAI is proud to announce that relAI fellow Prof. Daniel Rückert has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2025. This prestigious award, regarded as the most important German research prize, is endowed with 2.5 million euros by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Medicine and Healthcare at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has been honored for his research on AI-assisted medical imaging. He has developed pioneering methods with which AI algorithms can generate particularly informative images from computer tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, analyze them, and interpret them for improved medical diagnostics.

At relAI, he focuses on the safe and privacy aspects of the Medicine & Healthcare research area. His research encompasses several key topics, including reliable machine learning for medical imaging and sensing, privacy-preserving AI, trustworthy medical foundation models, and safe and responsible clinical AI. As a member of the relAI Steering Committee, he represents the Medicine & Healthcare area, playing a crucial role in shaping the organization's goals and future directions of the school.  

Congratulations!

Read more about it: link

We are happy to invite you to the upcoming Munich AI Lecture featuring two distinguished researchers Prof. Holger Hoos from RWTH Aachen University and Prof. Franca Hoffmann from California Institute of Technology. The lecture is organized by the Chair of Mathematics of Information Processing with support by MCML.

In the first talk, “Dynamics of Strategic Agents and Algorithms as PDEs“, Prof. Hoffmann will speak about dynamics of interactions between algorithms and a population.

In the second talk, “Learning, reasoning and optimisation: Adversarial robustness of neural networks”, Prof. Hoos will discuss robustness of neural networks and its verification.

Event Details:

  • Speakers: Prof. Dr. Holger Hoos and Prof. Dr. Franca Hoffmann
  • Date and Time: December 17, 2024, 16:00 CET (16:00-17:00 talk by Prof. Hoffmann and 17:30-18:30 talk by Prof. Hoos – We will have a small break with coffee/tea and snacks in between)
  • Location: Senatssaal, LMU Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, Munich 

Bio Franca Hoffmann

Franca Hoffmann obtained her master’s in mathematics from Imperial College London (UK) and holds a PhD from the Cambridge Centre for Analysis at University of Cambridge (UK). She held the position of von Kármán instructor at Caltech from 2017 to 2020, then joined University of Bonn (Germany) as Bonn Junior Professor and Quantum Leap Africa in Kigali, Rwanda (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences) as AIMS-Carnegie ResearchChair in Data Science, before arriving at the California Institute of Technology as Assistant Professor in 2022.

Bio Holger Hoos

Holger H. Hoos holds an Alexander von Humboldt professorship in AI at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), where he also leads the AI Center, as well as a professorship in machine learning at Universiteit Leiden (the Netherlands) and an adjunct professorship in computer science at the University of British Columbia (Canada). He is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the European AI Association (EurAI), past president of the Canadian Association for Artificial Intelligence, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) and chair of the board of CLAIRE, an organization that seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation (claire-ai.org).

relAI is a co-organiser of the Munich AI lectures. Find more info on these other upcoming events on the Munich AI lectures home page.

 

Congratulations to relAI Fellow Prof. Dr. Enkelejda Kasneci on receiving the prestigious 2024 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Medal from TUM. This annual award was presented to Prof. Kasneci at the recent Dies Academicus on December 5th. 

Enkelejda Kasneci is a Distinguished Professor (“Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professorship”) for Human-Centered Technologies for Learning at the TUM School of Social Sciences & Technology. Her research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction and developing AI systems that sense and infer the user’s cognitive state, expertise, actions, and intentions based on multimodal data. 

Prof. Dr. Enkelejda Kasneci together with her colleague Prof. Dr Tina Seidel, both directors of the TUM EdTech Center, received the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Medal 2024 in recognition of their “outstanding research in the field of digital teaching and learning as well as their commitment to establishing the TUM Center for Educational Technologies.” 

Congratulations on this achievement! 

We are excited to announce that the call for applications to the PhD program 2025 of our Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Reliable AI (relAI) is now open!

The novel, innovative PhD relAI program offers a cross-sectional training for successful education in AI including scientific knowledge, professional development courses and industrial exposure, providing a coherent, yet flexible and personalised training.

Funded applicants will receive a full salary for three years, including social benefits (TV-L E13 of the German public sector). They are further supported by travel grants, e.g. for conference attendance, research stays or home travel. Doctoral students are hosted by a relAI Fellow who helps them to define their research project. Depending on the affiliation of this hosting fellow they enrol at TUM or LMU.

We highly encourage you to apply if you have: 

  • an excellent master’s degree (or equivalent) in computer science, mathematics, engineering, natural sciences or other data science/machine learning/AI related disciplines;
  • a genuine interest to work on a topic of reliable AI covering aspects such as safety, security, privacy and responsibility in one relAI’s research areas Mathematical & Algorithmic foundations, Algorithmic Decision-Making, Medicine & Healthcare or Robotics & Interacting Systems;
  • certified proficiency in English.

📆 Application Deadline: January 13th, 2025

🔗 Apply now: www.zuseschoolrelai.de/application

Please help us in spreading the word, especially to excellent international candidates.

Congratulations!

Our relAI Fellow Björn Ommer was nominated for the Deutscher Zukunftspreis for his work on "Democratisation of Generative AI - Stable Diffusion from Development to Practice".

With the Deutscher Zukunftspreis, the German Federal President acknowledges outstanding achievements in technology, engineering, and science, as well as software and algorithm-based innovations that significantly expand the international state of research and technology and are already being used in practice. The prestigious award is endowed with 250,000 euros.

Björn Ommer and his team have developed a groundbreaking Stable Diffusion Model for image generation, which serves as a foundational technology for many AI models, including those from Google and OpenAI.

We’re proud to have Prof. Ommer in our relAI family.

We are excited to present the first relAI report.

The report opens with remarks from Markus Blume, Bavarian Minister for Science and Arts, alongside our relAI directors Stephan Günnemann (TUM) and Gitta Kutyniok (LMU).  It provides an insightful overview of the key components of our relAI school, including our research, educational initiatives, and organizational structure. Most importantly, it highlights the vibrant “relAI family” — our students, fellows, and our partners from both industry and academia.

Additionally, the report offers a comprehensive overview of the activities carried out by relAI during its first two years. It outlines our relAI events, public engagement initiatives, sustainability efforts, and notable achievements within this timeframe. A dedicated chapter features perspectives from relAI members, showcasing insights from relAI fellows, industry partner SAP, and our students, each sharing their unique viewpoints on the relAI experience.

Enjoy reading!

Link to the report: https://zuseschoolrelai.de/home/reports/

Save the date!

We are pleased to invite you to the upcoming Munich AI Lecture featuring renowned researcher Prof. Dr. Helmut Bölcskei hosted by our relAI director Prof. Dr. Gitta Kutyniok, Bavarian AI Chair for Mathematical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at LMU.

Deep neural networks have led to breakthrough results in numerous practical machine learning tasks. In the lecture “The Mathematical Universe behind Deep Neural Networks,” Prof. Dr. Bölcskei will take us on an exciting journey through the mathematical universe behind these practical successes, elucidating the theoretical underpinnings of deep neural networks in functional analysis, harmonic analysis, complex analysis, approximation theory, dynamical systems, Kolmogorov complexity, optimal transport, fractal geometry, mathematical logic, and automata theory.

Event Details:

 • Speaker: Prof. Dr. Helmut Bölcskei

• Date and Time: November 25th, 2024, 5.15 pm

• Location: Große Aula der LMU (Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, Room 120, 80539 München)

Helmut Bölcskei is a Professor of Mathematical Information Science at ETH Zurich and has been a Principal Investigator at the Lagrange Mathematics and Computing Research Center in Paris since 2021. After earning his degrees from Vienna University, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University and has held visiting researcher positions at many leading institutions. In addition to his academic achievements, he is also a successful entrepreneur. Professor Bölcskei has received numerous awards and prestigious fellowships and continues to serve as Editor-in Chief for some of the field's most distinguished journals.

Learn more about it here.

From 28 to 30 October, the second annual meeting of the three DAAD Zuse Schools of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, ELIZA (Darmstadt), SECAI (Dresden), und relAI (Munich) took place in Munich.

The meeting kicked off on the 28th with a work-meeting of the Zuse Schools directors and coordination teams, the chairman of the Zuse Schools Advisory Board, as well as representatives of BMBF and DAAD. The main event, which followed on the 29th, celebrated the three Zuse Schools’ second anniversary with a rich program featuring welcome speeches, academic and industry keynotes, talks by Zuse School students, and a stimulating panel discussion.

The celebration on the 29th was opened by inspiring welcome addresses from Prof. Dr. Gerhard Kramer, Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation, TUM, Prof. Dr. Hans van Ess, Vice President for Research, LMU, Dr. Kai Sicks, DAAD Secretary General,  MinR’in Dr. Lisette Andreae, Head of Unit European Higher Education Area, Internationalization, BMBF and MinDir Dr. Rolf-Dieter Jungk, Bavarian State Ministry for Science and the Arts (StMWK). relAI Fellow Prof. Björn Ommer delivered a brilliant keynote talk on the latest research on Generative AI. The industry keynote by Dr. Ahmed Sayed, Head of EMEA Emerging Technologies, AWS, provided an insightful overview of the industry applications of AI.  The four talks from students of the three Zuse Schools showcased the excellent research carried out by the schools. The program was rounded off with an engaging panel discussion about the topic “Reliability in times of generative AI”, featuring a diverse range of perspectives and voices.

The event concluded on the 30th with a Dialogue session, “My academic and professional future as a Zuse Schools graduate in Germany – chances and challenges” and the Advisory Board Meeting.

We are thankful to all the speakers and contributors who made the meeting a success, and to BMBF and DAAD for their support of the Zuse Schools.

Photo on the right side: DAAD / Siegfried Michael Wagner

On 30 October 2024, the relAI Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) met in Munich. Throughout the Meeting, SAB Members talked to relAI Directors and Fellows, Students, and the Management Team to gain insights into the relAI program from various perspectives within the relAI family. 

The SAB members shared their extensive experience from numerous international research projects. They advised relAI on the future directions of the program, suggesting strategies for optimizing internal structures and expanding our network.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all SAB members for their time, insights, and invaluable contributions to the relAI program.  

Meeting with relAI Directors and Fellows
Break time discussions and posters
Meeting with relAI Students

Congratulations! relAI student Sameer Ambekar wins the best paper award at the MICCAI Workshop on Advancing Data Solutions in Medical Imaging AI (ADSMI). 

Sameer is a PhD student at relAI, advised by the relAI Fellow Julia A. Schnabel. His research focusses on test-time adaptation and domain generalization for medical imaging. 

His award-winning paper “Selective Test-Time Adaptation for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection using Neural Implicit Representations”, co-authored with Julia A. Schnabel and Cosmin Bereca, presents a novel zero-shot methodology to adapt models in real time to test images from new domains using deep pre-trained features. The approach is validated on brain anomaly detection data. 

This work addresses domain shift at test-time, which Sameer explains in more detail in his recently published relAI blog post. In the post, you can also learn about the importance of handling domain shifts to make AI more reliable: https://zuseschoolrelai.de/blog/mitigating-domain-shifts/  

Congratulations on this achievement!