Annual Zuse Schools Meeting in Darmstadt

News

The annual meeting of the three German Zuse Schools - ELIZA, SECAI, and relAI - funded by DAAD in 2022, was hosted by ELIZA this October in the beautiful halls of Technische Universität Darmstadt. The meeting highlighted the Zuse School initiative´s success in attracting international AI talent and providing an exceptional, innovative education closely connected to the industry. Most importantly, it served as a wonderful "family gathering," reinforcing the strong ties that have developed among the three schools.


The program began with welcome addresses by Prof. Dr. Matthias Oechsner, Vice President for Research at TU Darmstadt, and Dr. Michael Harms, Deputy Secretary General of the DAAD, and was followed by intriguing keynote lectures from Prof. Dr. Markus Reichstein and Dr. Claudius Gläser, representing the academic and industry sectors, respectively. This was followed by many exciting presentations from our students showcasing their outstanding research results, including that of relAI PhD Student Valentine Idakwo. A panel discussion featured the participation of relAI Fellow Volker Tresp, and an interesting poster session encouraged interactions among members. The program was rounded off by an impressive, guided tour through robotics lab.

🙏Thank you, ELIZA, for the great organization of the event!

🙏 A heartfelt thanks to DAAD and BMFTR for supporting us! A great thanks also to our presidents, Matthias H. Tschöp and Thomas F. Hofmann, for their additional support and for creating such inspiring environments at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Technische Universität München for our Zuse School relAI!  

relAI is proud to have supported the KI-Symposium 2025, which took place yesterday at the historic Große Aula of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. The event brought together researchers, students, and guests from academia, industry, and the public to celebrate the vibrant and diverse AI landscape at LMU, one of the two universities affiliated with relAI.

Throughout the evening the breadth, depth, and societal relevance of the research presented stood out. It's difficult to pick a single highlight from such a packed program. The event included forward-looking opening remarks by LMU Vice President for Digital Strategy, Prof. Dr. Julia Dittrich, and Dr. Christian Scharpf from the Landeshauptstadt München. Attendees enjoyed an insightful keynote by relAI Fellow Prof. Dr. Björn Ommer, an engaging panel on  LMU's AI strategy featuring Vice Presidents Prof. Dr. Julia Dittrich, Dr. Philipp Baaske, and relAI Fellow Prof. Dr. Jochen Kuhn, a demonstration of PathoPan by Aicendence as part of the AI Transfer, pitch talks by LMU’s newly appointed AI professors, and the presentations of the AI-HUB@LMU Prize.

When we try to help the most vulnerable, and we have limited resources to deploy, should we invest them in building better prediction models, or is it sometimes more effective to simply expand access and help more people, even if the targeting isn´t absolutely perfect?

If you’d like to learn more about it, check out the 👉 podcast!

In this episode of Executive Code, PhD student Unai Fischer Abaigar discusses his paper The Value of Prediction in Identifying the Worst-Off. He explains how governments utilize AI to allocate limited resources—and when it is more effective to enhance predictive models versus simply expanding access to public programs. Using real data from Germany’s employment offices, Unai’s research challenges the assumption that better prediction always means better outcomes in public decision-making.

🎉Congratulations!

We are thrilled to announce that Frauke Kreuter, a relAI Fellow and member of the relAI Steering Committee, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Waksberg Award. This prestigious award recognizes her significant impact on survey methodology and her role in training the next generation of researchers.

The Waksberg Award is presented by the American Statistical Association and by Statistics Canada's Survey Methodology journal to honor outstanding contributions to survey statistics and methodology.

As part of this recognition, Frauke Kreuter will deliver the Waksberg Invited Address at the Statistics Canada Symposium in 2026 and will also publish a paper in the December 2026 issue of Survey Methodology.

More Information:

https://www.lmu.de/ai-hub/en/news-events/all-news/news/prof.-dr.-frauke-kreuter-wins-2026-waksberg-award.html

🎉 Congratulations!

We are excited to announce that a team consisting of relAI PhD students Shuo Chen, Bailan He, and Jingpei Wu, along with relAI Fellow Volker Tresp and members of the Torr Vision Group from the University of Oxford and TU Berlin, received the Honorable Mention Award at OpenAI Red-Teaming Challenge on Kaggle.  They ranked among the top 20 teams (Top 3%) out of 5,911 participants and over 600 teams.

The Red Teaming Challenge, initiated by OpenAI, tasked participants with probing its newly released open-weight model, gpt-oss-20b. The objective was to identify previously undetected vulnerabilities and harmful behaviors, such as lying, deceptive alignment, and reward-hacking exploits.

Would you like to learn more about the awarded work?

The write-up of the hackathon and the accompanying paper, “Bag of Tricks for Subverting Reasoning-Based Safety Guardrails,” detail the findings of the study, revealing systemic vulnerabilities in recent reasoning-based safety guardrails like Deliberative Alignment.

👉 Check them out: https://chenxshuo.github.io/bag-of-tricks/

Don’t miss the upcoming  Munich AI Lecture featuring Prof. Yoshua Bengio from Université de Montréal.

As AI capabilities accelerate, a critical question emerges: can we ensure these systems remain aligned with human values? While advances in reasoning and planning bring us closer to broadly human-level intelligence, recent findings also reveal troubling behaviors such as deception, hacking, and resistance to shutdown.

In his Munich AI Lecture, Yoshua Bengio will explore these challenges and outline a safer path forward. He argues for the design of non-agentic yet trustworthy AIs — systems modeled after a selfless scientist, dedicated to understanding the world rather than pursuing their own goals. Such “Scientist AIs” could act as monitors, helping society manage more powerful agentic systems and reduce existential risks. Beyond technical solutions, Bengio calls for political coordination at national and international levels, treating transformative AI as a global public good essential for safeguarding democracy and stability.

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion, including panelists Andrea Martin (Chief Technology Officer, IBM), relAI Director Prof. Dr. Gitta Kutyniok, and Stephanie Jacobs (Head of Office, Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts), which will be moderated by Dr. Michael Klimke (CEO, BAIOSPHERE).

📍 Bavarian Academy of Sciences Alfons-Goppel-Str. 11 (Residenz) 80539 Munich

📅 23 October 2025  

🕡 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm

About the Speaker

Yoshua Bengio is Full Professor at Université de Montréal, Founder and Scientific Advisor of Mila, Co-President and Scientific Director of LawZero, and Canada CIFAR AI Chair. A recipient of the 2018 A.M. Turing Award — often called the “Nobel Prize of computing” — he is the most cited computer scientist worldwide and among the most cited living scientists across all fields. Bengio is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and Canada, an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Knight of the French Legion of Honor, and currently chairs the International AI Safety Report.

Registration

The event is already fully booked. If you would like to get put on the waiting list, please send  a message: events@baiosphere.org

The lecture will also be available via LIVESTREAM on YouTube (no registration needed).

More information:

https://baiosphere.org/en/events/2025/munich-ai-lecture-prof-yoshua-bengio

https://www.lmu.de/ai-hub/en/news-events/all-events/event/munich-ai-lecture-prof.-yoshua-bengio.html

Last weekend, relAI engaged with children during the TUM Open Doors with the Mouse 2025 event at the Munich Data Science Institute (MDSI). Students from relAI - Manuel Hülskamp, Natascha Niessen, Lisa Schmierer, and Richard Schwank - enthusiastically participated, using computer games to explain concepts of machine learning and artificial intelligence to the young attendees. The children learned how to train an AI model to differentiate between apples, pears, bananas, and plums, and they even had the opportunity to recognize their own faces, testing this feature with their siblings and other visitors.

A heartfelt thank you to the relAI students and coordinator Andrea Schafferhans for their support of the event, as well as to the families who participated.

Check the MDSI news for extensive information about the event.

relAI is excited to announce that GE HealthCare has become an official industry partner.

As one of the leading global providers of MRI, ultrasound, and other medical imaging technologies, GE HealthCare is dedicated to creating a world where medicine and healthcare have no limits. Their mission aligns closely with relAI’s focus on safety and security, aiming to provide high-quality, reliable devices to improve patient care. GE HealthCare is furthermore connected to relAI through PhD students Natascha Niessen and Ha Young Kim, who are both PhD scientists at GE HealthCare.

GE HealthCare is eager to connect with young talents at relAI and support them in their career development and educational journeys. To facilitate this connection, GE HealthCare will host an event, offering relAI students the opportunity to learn more about the work being done at the R&D site in Munich. This event will also allow students to explore potential collaborations and meet professionals who are shaping the future of medical technology.

 

Registration for the Munich Career Fair AI & Data Science 2025 is now open! You can request your ticket here.

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

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

🏢Participating companies: Celonis, DENSO, Diehl, GE Healthcare, Google, Imfusion, Munich Re, QuantCo, SAP, Thyssenkrupp, and Zeiss

👉 Check out this link for more information and the agenda

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. .