relAI New Research Area

News

Education is a crucial societal priority and a strategic focus for the application of reliable AI. To address this, relAI has introduced a new research area: Learning & Instruction. This initiative will be led by relAI fellows Prof. Jochen Kuhn from LMU and Prof. Enkeledja Kasneci from TUM, both of whom are experts in educational technology. 

Learning & Instruction focuses on exploring how reliable AI can be used to transform education in meaningful and responsible ways. It investigates the potential of intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive feedback, and digital learning assistants to personalize learning paths and provide targeted support. At the same time, it examines the broader effects of AI on teaching and learning: how AI systems shape learner motivation, teacher roles, and the dynamics of human-AI collaboration. 

By bringing together expertise from artificial intelligence, learning sciences, and educational research, Learning & Instruction aims to develop robust and trustworthy AI applications that not only advance technology, but also serve pedagogical goals and democratic values. .

We are excited to announce that the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Starting Grant to relAI Fellow Niki Kilbertus for the project DYNAMICAUS, which focuses on advancing the understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in complex dynamical systems.

Many global challenges, from climate change to healthcare and pandemic preparedness, involve systems where small changes can have far-reaching effects. Understanding how interventions influence outcomes in such complex dynamics requires reliable “if-then” reasoning. Traditional mathematical dynamical models often oversimplify these systems, while purely data-driven machine learning models, though powerful, can be difficult to interpret and may not generalize well to new situations. The DYNAMICAUS project addresses this gap by combining machine learning methods with rigorous mechanistic modeling and methods from causal inference.

DYNAMICAUS aligns closely with the mission of relAI. Its goal is to provide reliable insights that address complex societal challenges in a responsible and impactful way. Additionally, a key application area for these methods is medicine & healthcare, where the aim is to enhance treatment planning by improving the anticipation of patient outcomes.

More Information:

https://www.nat.tum.de/en/nat/latest/article/six-erc-starting-grants-for-researchers-at-tum/

https://www.helmholtz-munich.de/en/newsroom/news-all/artikel/niki-kilbertus-receives-erc-starting-grant-for-causal-analysis-in-complex-systems

Don’t miss the upcoming  Munich AI Lecture featuring Prof. Aaron M. Johnson fromCarnegie Mellon University and Visiting Professor at TUM.

What happens when robots leave the lab and enter the real world? Suddenly, uncertainty is everywhere — slippery mud, bending branches, unpredictable terrain. These challenges are especially tough when it comes to contact: one moment a robot applies massive force, the next it has no grip at all.

In his talk, Aaron M. Johnson shows how robots can learn to master the unknown — from off-road driving in new environments to agile walking through vegetation. Expect cutting-edge insights into how uncertainty can be modeled, reduced, and even turned into an advantage for the future of robotics.

📍 Georg-Brauchle-Ring 58, Room M001
The TUM Room finder will help you find the way

More information:

The Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI), the Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Reliable AI (relAI), the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), and the AI Hub@LMU are organizing the Munich Career Fair AI & Data Science at TranslaTUM on October 23, 2025. The event is tailored to companies and students (bachelor's, master's, and doctoral candidates) who are interested in AI, ML, and data science.

We are pleased to announce that the first Munich Career Fair AI & Data Science 2025 will take place on October 23, 2025, at TranslaTUM. This year, we welcome eleven industry partners and students in bachelor's and master's programs, as well as doctoral candidates. The aim is to connect students at various stages of their education with industry representatives and to highlight career prospects in the field of AI and data science in the Munich ecosystem.

Each industry partner will present its activities in the field of AI and data science in an overview talk and introduce the associated career opportunities. In addition, there will be plenty of time and space for networking and personal exchange in the foyer of TranslaTUM and in separate meeting rooms.

 Event Details

📅 Date and Time: October 23, 2025, 2 to 5 pm

📍 Location: TranslaTUM at Klinikum rechts der Isar, Einsteinstraße 25 (Bau 522), 81675 Munich

📝 Registration: registration will open in September, for now, please save the date!

Agenda

AffiliationSpeakerTalk title
CelonisNiclas SabelThe Power of Agentic AI: Driving Organizational Transformation and Efficiency
DENSOBrian Hsuan-Cheng LiaoThe Development of Reliable AI-Driven Vehicles in DENSO
DiehlCaroline Mücke
Joel Eichberger
Matthew Schwind		AI at Diehl - Implementing AI in a diversified technology group
GE HealthcareDr. Timo SchirmerThe Human Algorithm in Healthcare: Careers and AI in Times of Disruption
GoogleIrina Stambolska Google AI, Data Science and Careers
ImfusionDr. Raphael PrevostEnabling Rapid Innovation in Medical Imaging with AI
MunichReKarolina StosioData & AI @ Munich Re
QuantCoCarolin ThomasQuantCo
SAPYichen LouTowards Intelligent Enterprise Systems - AI @ SAP
ThyssenkruppDr. Nikou GünnemannKI@thyssenkrupp
ZeissDr. Florent MartinAI and ML in ZEISS

🎉 Congratulations!

The month of July has brought excellent news for our relAI Fellows. Prof. Fabian Theis and Prof. Pramod Bhatotia have each received a European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept Grant, which supports scientists who want to develop marketable innovations based on their research results.

Pramod Bhatotia's ERC-funded project is set to optimize cloud computing by enhancing the security and reliability of online systems. Meanwhile, Fabian Theis´s initiative aims to integrate single-cell genomics, advanced computational models, and generative AI to tackle one of the biggest challenges in drug therapy: precise targeting. For more information on the funded projects, please visit this site.

The innovative research of Fabian Theis has also been recognized with the 2025 International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Innovator Award. This recognition is presented annually to a leading scientist who not only makes progressive contributions to computational biology but also consistently pursues unexplored directions in the field.

Finally, Prof. Nassir Navab has been awarded the renowned 2025 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) Technical Achievement Award for his pioneering role in establishing medical augmented reality, surgical data science, and robotic imaging as research fields.

👏 Congratulations!

relAI Fellow Jochen Kuhn has been elected Vice President for Innovation in Education and Teacher Training of LMU. Alongside the other nine new Vice Presidents appointed last week by the LMU University Council, Jochen Kuhn will play an active role in shaping the discourse on addressing the social challenges of our time. To succeed in this endeavour, interdisciplinarity, combined with specialist expertise in key areas such as digitalization and artificial intelligence, is essential.

Jochen Kuhn has served as the Chair of Physics Education at LMU’s Faculty of Physics since 2022, and he is working in AI in Education within relAI. This election will accelerate the advancement of this area.

For more Information, click this link.

🎉 Congratulations!

We are proud to share that relAI PhD student Yusuf Sale has been honored with one of the IJAR Young Researcher Awards. The prestigious prize, funded by the International Journal of Approximate Reasoning (IJAR), recognizes students who demonstrate excellence in research at an early stage of their scientific careers.  

Yusuf received the award at ISIPTA 25, the 14th International Symposium on Imprecise Probabilities: Theories and Applications, organized by ISIPTA, the leading international forum for theories and applications of imprecise probabilities.   

🎉 Congratulations!

We are thrilled to announce that the paper The Value of Prediction in Identifying the Worst-Off co-authored by relAI PhD student Unai Fischer Abaigar, relAI Fellow Christoph Kern, and Juan Carlos Perdomo, from Harvard University, has been selected for an Outstanding Paper Award at ICML 2025, one of the top-tier conferences in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence.     

This is an exceptional outcome, considering that only six papers have received this recognition out of more than 12000 submitted this year.

relAI has been instrumental in fostering the collaboration that led to this significant outcome by funding Unai Fisher Abaigar's research stay at Harvard University. Visits to international centres are one of the components of the relAI PhD curriculum, designed to support collaborations with international researchers and gain international research experience on the topic of the reliability of artificial intelligence (AI).  

The paper tackles aspects of the Algorithmic Decision-Making relAI research area and the relAI central theme Responsibility, exploring how predictive models, particularly those using machine learning, can be used in government programs to identify and support the most vulnerable individuals.

We are excited to announce the next Munich AI Lecture featuring Prof. Guido Montúfar, Professor of Mathematics and of Statistics & Data Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and leader of the Mathematical Machine Learning research group at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, MPI MiS. He serves as a core Principal Investigator in the SECAI Zuse School of Excellence in AI (Leipzig–Dresden).

 Event Details:

🎤 Title: Deep Learning Theory: What we know, what we are learning, and what remains unclear

📅 Date and Time: July 17, 2025 at 5 pm CET

📍 Location: Room B006, Main LMU Building, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 01, 80539 Munich

Abstract

Deep learning has revolutionized artificial intelligence and a wide range of applied domains, driving transformative progress in computer vision, language processing, and scientific discovery. This talk surveys the vibrant and rapidly evolving landscape of deep learning theory—an effort to uncover the mathematical foundations of learning with neural networks. We will review key theoretical insights into optimization dynamics, implicit biases of learning algorithms, and the generalization behavior of deep models—highlighting connections to classical learning theory, high dimensional statistics, and approximation theory. Along the way, we will discuss some of the major successes in analyzing overparameterized regimes, as well as open challenges in understanding feature learning and generalization under moderate overparameterization. The talk will also spotlight emerging phenomena such as benign overfitting, grokking, and delayed generalization, illustrating the depth and complexity of ongoing research questions that challenge traditional notions.

More information is available at the website of Munich AI Lectures

👏 Congratulations!

On 1 July 2025, relAI fellow Claudia Eckert will assume the office of Scientific President of acatech - National Academy of Science and Engineering. She was unanimously elected by the acatech Executive Board.

acatech, founded in 2002 and established as the German Academy of Science and Engineering in 2008, represents the interests of German technical sciences independently, in self-determination and guided by the common good, at home and abroad. acatech is organized as a working academy that advises politicians and the public on forward-looking issues concerning the technical sciences and technology politics.

This is a significant recognition of Professor Eckert's leadership and expertise in the field.

For more information, please see the following links: