From July 28 to July 31, 2026, relAI hosted the second relAI International Summer School at LMU. This event focused on promoting educational exchange aimed at developing reliable AI and exploring current trends in the field.
Last week, our industry partner, QuantCo, hosted a networking event with relAI at their new Munich office.
The relAI students had a wonderful evening filled with engaging conversations and delicious food. They had the opportunity to meet colleagues from QuantCo's AI, and engineering teams and learned about how the company develops scalable systems to transform messy, real-world data into impactful decisions.
We are pleased to share relAI’s contribution to the European Embodied Robotics Week, whichtook place last week in Munich. The event was organizedby RoboTUM together with START Munich and the ESRA (European Student Robotics Association) network.
The Robotics Festival convened a diverse range of stakeholders from the European robotics and physical artificial intelligence ecosystem. Specialists, students, and robotics enthusiasts participated in city-wide events, including open houses at robotics laboratories, makerspaces, and studios throughout Munich, as well as a hackathon.
The event ended with a summit featuring talks and panels from leaders in embodied intelligence. relAI was represented in the panel discussion “Dexterity and Manipulation for robotics” by relAI Fellow Prof. Khadiv.
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Last week, the relAI family gathered for our annual retreat in the beautiful and serene Bad Kohlgrub, from June 17th to 19th. During this time, relAI students, fellows, directors, and management came together to share ideas and visions for the future of our school, the role of AI in education, and the future of science in the era of agentic AI.
The program included keynote talks from relAI fellows Enkelejda Kasneci, Sandra Hirche, Niki Kilbertus, and Christoph Kern. It also featured lightning talks by relAI students, group discussions, and fellow/student one-on-one sessions. Additionally, there was plenty of time for networking and social activities.
Keynote by Enkelejda KasneciKeynote by Sandra HircheKeynote by Niki KilbertusKeynote by Christoph Kern
In the one-on-one sessions, relAI fellows and students connected directly to discuss their research experiences, career paths, and future aspirations. These conversations provided a unique mentorship opportunity, often sparking new perspectives for both mentors and mentees.
This year's group discussions focused on questions about the two strategic pillars that are currently reshaping the landscape of reliable AI:
Future of Science in Times of Agentic AI
How do agentic workflows change the way we conduct and validate our research?
What are the theoretical and practical requirements for genuinely dependable autonomous systems?
AI for Next Generation Education
What roles will AI and human teachers play moving forward? How can we lead the adoption and ethical use of AI technologies?
How can we establish standards for reliability in pedagogical AI tools?
A highlight of this year’s retreat was the presentation of the final relAI certificates to MSc and PhD students who completed the program. This moment provided an opportunity to reconnect with relAI alumni and learn about their career paths after leaving relAI.
This inspiring retreat strengthened our community and paved the way for our efforts to shape the future of reliable AI.
A big thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to making this event a success!
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On June 8, 2026, TUM hosted the International Symposium 'Future Learning: Global Perspectives, European Pathways' as part of the new relAI research area Learning & Instruction.
Frontier AI systems have recently solved IMO problems, discovered new mathematical constructions, and resolved open Erdős problems. Yet a more mundane question remains: 🤔how should a working mathematician actually use these tools day to day?
In this talk, titled “The Agentic Researcher: Turning AI Coding Agents into Research Assistants” Emil Partow, PhD Student of our relAI Director Prof. Gitta Kutyniok presented a recent paper from Prof. Pokutta (Zuse-Institut Berlin) that offers a concrete answer. The authors propose a five-level taxonomy of AI integration into research, ranging from classical work without AI to fully autonomous research loops. They have implemented this idea within an open-source framework.
Following a detailed presentation by Emil Partow, members of relAI and Prof. Kutyniok's research group gathered to discuss this forward-looking topic. The presentation explained the open-source tool that implements core research "commandments" (such as preventing the falsification of experimental data) via a practical, actionable loop. Participants then discussed how AI agents are already shaping research methodologies, what is required to implement these workflows successfully, and how to ensure human oversight remains at the center of the process. Emil also shared a practical case study demonstrating the tool in action, sparking a broader reflection on the evolving role of AI in modern research.
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🔮How will artificial intelligence (AI) influence the future of learning?
Are you interested in contributing research for underserved communities? Don't miss the EEAMO Conference 2026, the 6th ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization.
This event will showcase work across the research-to-practice pipeline, aiming to ensure that algorithmic systems serve a broadly beneficial role in society by advancing equity and expanding access to opportunities for underserved communities.
On March 10, relAI students had the privilege of hosting Dr. Sebastian Hallensleben, Chief Trust Officer at the relAI Industry PartnerResaro, as an invited speaker at the relAI student seminar. This seminar serves as an important platform that fosters valuable research exchanges and networking opportunities for our students.
Dr. Hallensleben is an expert at the intersection of AI research, regulation, and industry. He plays a significant role in developing AI standards for Europe as the Chair of CEN-CENELEC JTC 21, where European AI standards are being crafted to support EU regulations. Additionally, he co-chairs the AI risk and accountability initiatives at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
About the Talk
In his talk, he shared valuable insights on the landscape of international AI standards and their development. The first half of the session focused on the EU AI Act, detailing how the currently developing landscape of harmonised standards will provide the technical basis for legal compliance. Moving from regulation to practice, he was joined by Linus Stach to demonstrate how Resaro interacts with this landscape in the development of their AI evaluation platform, navigating the complexity of accurately communicating technical metrics to a wide audience of stakeholders. The speakers then demonstrated their evaluation framework using a case study based on public crime statistics from Baden-Württemberg. They showed how the framework can be used to assess model performance dimensions (such as privacy, consistency and correctness), compare different models, and ensure compliant application. The seminar concluded with an extensive and detailed discussion on the practical challenges of defining and achieving AI reliability in real-world scenarios.
More about the Speaker
Sebastian is the initiator and Programme Chair of the Digital Trust Convention and is Principal Advisor Digital Trust at KI Park. As Chief Trust Officer at Resaro, he works towards drilling down to ground truths about capabilities of AI systems. - Previously, Sebastian Hallensleben headed Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence at VDE Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies. He focuses in particular on operationalising AI ethics, on characterizing AI quality and on building privacy-preserving trust infrastructures for a more resilient digital space.
