18.12.2025
MCML Thinkathon
A Short Recap
MCML has launched the Thinkathon, a new initiative designed to connect AI research with the practical needs of the Bavarian education system. In a hackathon-style setting, MCML Junior Members collaborated with mentors and stakeholders from the Bavarian Ministry of Education and other partner …
18.12.2025
“See, Don’t Assume”: Revealing and Reducing Gender Bias in AI
MCML Research Insight - With Leander Girrbach, Yiran Huang, Stephan Alaniz and Zeynep Akata
Using AI and LLMs at work feels almost unavoidable today: they make things easier, but they can also go wrong in important ways. One of the trickiest problems? Gender bias. For example, if you ask about someone’s skills from a photo, it may confidently label them a “born leader” or …
16.12.2025
Fabian Theis Featured in Handelsblatt on the Future of AI in Precision Medicine
Artificial Intelligence and Biomedical Research
Our PI Fabian Theis was recently featured in an interview exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping modern healthcare. As a leading researcher in AI-driven biomedical data analysis, he explains why precision medicine is still widely underestimated, despite major scientific advances. AI now …
16.12.2025
Gitta Kutyniok Featured in VDI Nachrichten on AI Ethics
Defining Measurable Criteria for Responsible AI Agents
Our PI Gitta Kutyniok was featured in VDI Nachrichten discussing ethical and safety challenges for autonomous AI agents. She emphasizes the need for measurable criteria to guide AI decision-making, ensuring responsible and transparent behavior. Kutyniok’s insights highlight how rigorous mathematical frameworks can support trustworthy AI in …
16.12.2025
Hinrich Schütze Featured in WirtschaftsWoche on Innovative AI Approaches
Advancing Language Models With Memory-Efficient and Context-Aware AI
Our PI Hinrich Schütze commented on the Swiss start-up Giotto.ai’s breakthrough in language models, featured in WirtschaftsWoche. Giotto.ai challenges the prevailing trend of ever-larger AI models by developing a highly efficient 200-million-parameter system that leverages external memory and context-aware decoding to reduce errors and …
16.12.2025
Xiaoxiang Zhu Featured in Focus Online on Global 3D Building Atlas
AI-Driven 3D Mapping Reveals Urbanization, Infrastructure, and Social Insights
Our PI Xiaoxiang Zhu and her team have created a Global Building Atlas, mapping 2.75 billion buildings in 3D. Using satellite data and AI, the atlas captures building footprints, geometry, and height, providing insights into urbanization, housing, and infrastructure. The project introduces building volume per capita as a new indicator for living …
11.12.2025
Digdeep Podcast: Will AI Be the New Colleague, Prof. Sabine Pfeiffer?
News From the Digital World by MCML PI Frauke Kreuter and Christof Horn
In the new episode of #digdeep, Sabine Pfeiffer from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg talks about AI as a new colleague. An MIT study shows that artificial intelligence is widespread in everyday life, but lags behind expectations in business. Optimistic narratives about AI are of little help when it comes to actually using the technology productively. …
11.12.2025
From Sitting Dog to Standing: A New Way to Morph 3D Shapes
MCML Research Insight - With Lu Sang and Daniel Cremers
Ever wondered how a 3D shape can smoothly change — like a robot arm bending or a dog rising from sitting to standing — without complex simulations or hand-crafted data? Researchers from MCML and the University of Bonn tackled this challenge in their ICLR 2025 paper, “Implicit Neural Surface Deformation with Explicit Velocity Fields”.
©BAdW / Karl Neunert
08.12.2025
Tom Sterkenburg Wins Karl-Heinz Hoffmann Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
Honored for His Work at the Intersection of Philosophy, Statistics, and Machine Learning
MCML JRG Leader Tom Sterkenburg has been awarded the Karl-Heinz Hoffmann Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BAdW). The prize was presented at the Academy’s Ceremonial Annual Meeting on 6 December 2025 in Munich. With its annual science prizes, the BAdW honors outstanding early-career researchers across disciplines. The …
08.12.2025
Björn Ommer Guest on ZDF’s Terra X
Image-Generative AI and Visual Understanding
Our PI Björn Ommer was a guest in the ZDF science series Terra X - moderated by Harald Lesch - where he explained how image-generative AI works and how systems like Stable Diffusion enable machines to “see” and create images.
In the episode Björn Ommer discusses the technological foundations of generative models and their impact on art, creativity, …
08.12.2025
Björn Schuller Guest on ZDF’s Terra X
Emotion Recognition and Empathic AI
Our PI Björn Schuller was a guest in the ZDF science series Terra X - moderated by Harald Lesch, where he discussed the fundamentals of Affective Computing and the role of emotion recognition in artificial intelligence.
The episode explores how AI systems can detect emotions from speech, facial expressions, and text, as well as the ethical …
08.12.2025
MCML General Assembly
A Short Recap
The MCML held its annual General Assembly last week, bringing its members together for networking and discussion. The program opened with updates and highlights from the MCML directors, followed by an overview of the center’s workshop and training activities.
©Juli Eberle / TUM / ediundsepp Gestaltungsgesellschaft
04.12.2025
World’s First Complete 3D Model of All Buildings Released
TUM News
A research team led by MCML PI Xiaoxiang Zhu has released the GlobalBuildingAtlas, the first global high-resolution 3D model of all buildings on Earth. Based on 2019 satellite data, the atlas includes more than 2.75 billion buildings worldwide. It offers a ground-breaking spatial resolution of 3×3 meters, providing up to 30 times more detail than …
04.12.2025
When to Say “I’m Not Sure”: Making Language Models More Self-Aware
MCML Research Insight - With Yawei Li, David Rügamer, Bernd Bischl, and Mina Rezaei
Large language models like ChatGPT or Gemini are now everywhere, from summarizing text to writing code or answering simple questions. But there’s one thing they still struggle with: admitting uncertainty. Ask a fine-tuned LLM a tricky question, and it might sound quite confident, even when it’s completely wrong. This “overconfidence” …
©MCML
01.12.2025
Research Stay at Princeton University
Abdurahman Maarouf – Funded by the MCML AI X-Change Program
From May to July, I spent three exciting months as a visiting researcher at the Computer Science Department of Princeton University, hosted by Prof. Manoel Horta Ribeiro. The visit grew out of a keynote Manoel gave at LMU. After his talk, we discussed potential joint projects at the intersection of causal inference, machine learning, and social …
27.11.2025
Daniel Grün and Lukas Heinrich Receive BMFTR Funding for Physics Foundation Models
Developing Advanced AI Tools for Astro- And Particle Physics
MCML PIs Daniel Grün and Lukas Heinrich are part of the newly funded Germany-wide project “SciFM,” supported by the BMFTR, which aims to develop foundation models for astro- and particle physics. Modern particle colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and telescopes like the Square Kilometer Array generate exabytes of data, creating an …
27.11.2025
MCML Members Honored in GAIE Spotlight 2025
Recognized for Their Contributions to AI Research and Innovation in Germany
Four members of the MCML have been selected for the GAIE Spotlight Series: Leading 30 German AI Experts & Academics 2025. The list recognizes outstanding researchers shaping the future of artificial intelligence in Germany and beyond.
27.11.2025
Seeing the Bigger Picture – One Detail at a Time
MCML Research Insight - With Rui Xiao, Sanghwan Kim, and Zeynep Akata
Large vision-language models (VLMs) like CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) have changed how AI works with mixed inputs of images and text, by learning to connect pictures and words. Given an image with a caption like “a dog playing with a ball”, CLIP learns to link visual patterns (the dog, the ball, the grass) with the …
25.11.2025
InterACT Workshop 2025
Methodological Challenges in Explainable AI
The InterACT Workshop 2025 took place at LMU Munich in September. Participants engaged in an intensive scientific exchange on methodological challenges in Explainable AI (xAI). The workshop brought together 24 researchers from eight institutions across Europe: LMU Munich, University of Bremen, University of Warsaw, University of Zurich, Norwegian …
©BIFOLD/Michael Setzpfandt
25.11.2025
How Will Artificial Intelligence Redefine Medicine in the Next Decade?
AI in Medicine Workshop 2025
The AI in Medicine Workshop 2025 brought together more than 120 experts from medicine and computer science at the Baltic, Charité’s innovation hub for digital health.
25.11.2025
Daniel Rückert Among the World’s Most Cited Researchers
TUM News
MCML Director Daniel Rückert is listed among the world’s most frequently cited researchers in the Cross-Field category for his work on artificial intelligence in healthcare and medicine. In total, 17 TUM scientists were recognized in the 2025 Highly Cited Researchers rankings by Clarivate, highlighting their significant contributions to their …
©MCML
24.11.2025
Research Stay at Stanford University
Kun Yuan – Funded by the MCML AI X-Change Program
During my research stay at Stanford University from July to September 2025, I had the pleasure of being part of the research group led by Assistant Professor Serena Yeung in the Department of Biomedical Data Science. My two-month stay in California gave me the opportunity to investigate how public scientific articles can be leveraged to build …
20.11.2025
Digdeep Podcast: How Does Synera Shape Product Development of the Future, Moritz Maier?
News From the Digital World by MCML PI Frauke Kreuter and Christof Horn
In the new episode of #digdeep, Moritz Mayer talks about the shape product development of Synera. Developing physical products requires specialized knowledge and the use of complex tools. Moritz Maier and his startup Synera want to simplify this process by creating a platform that enables product development such as “low code” programming. On this …
20.11.2025
Zigzag Your Way to Faster, Smarter AI Image Generation
MCML Research Insight - With Vincent Tao Hu, Olga Grebenkova, Pingchuan Ma, Johannes Schusterbauer, and Björn Ommer
State-of-the-art diffusion models like DiT and Stable Diffusion have made AI image generation incredibly powerful. But they still struggle with one big issue: scaling to large images or videos quickly and efficiently without exhausting your GPU memory. What if we could process images faster, use less memory, and still retain visual quality—without …
13.11.2025
Anne-Laure Boulesteix Among the World’s Most Cited Researchers
LMU Newsroom
MCML PI Anne‑Laure Boulesteix has been named a Highly Cited Researcher 2025 by Clarivate for her influential work in the Cross-Field category. The recognition highlights publications from 2014–2024 that rank among the top 1% most cited worldwide, reflecting Anne‑Laure Boulesteix’s global impact and the international visibility of her research. She …
13.11.2025
Björn Ommer Featured in Frankfurter Rundschau
Google’s AI Search Mode Challenges Content Visibility and Online Publishing
MCML PI Björn Ommer was recently featured in Frankfurter Rundschau, commenting on the impact of Google’s new AI-powered search mode. The article discusses how AI-generated summaries in search results may reduce traffic to publishers and reshape how users access information online. Ommer emphasized that while this development offers greater …
13.11.2025
Fabian Theis Among the World’s Most Cited Researchers
TUM News
MCML PI Fabian Theis is listed among the world’s most frequently cited researchers in Biology and Biochemistry for his work on mathematical modeling of biological systems. In total, 14 TUM scientists were recognized in the 2025 Highly Cited Researchers rankings by Clarivate, highlighting their significant contributions to their respective fields.
13.11.2025
Explaining AI Decisions: Shapley Values Enable Smart Exosuits
MCML Research Insight - With Julia Herbinger, Giuseppe Casalicchio, Yusuf Sale, Bernd Bischl and Eyke Hüllermeier
Picture a typical day in a warehouse: one worker lifts, bends, and carries out the same task over and over again. While the routine may seem simple, the physical toll steadily builds—affecting joints and muscles. To combat the long-term health risks associated with such repetitive movements, businesses are increasingly turning to exoskeletons and …
06.11.2025
Industry Pitch Talks Recap
With the Stadtwerke München (SWM)
On 4 November 2025, Stadtwerke München (SWM) welcomed representatives from the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML) for a focused session of Industry Pitchtalks. The event highlighted the growing synergy between academic research and real-world applications of artificial intelligence in energy, utilities, and process analytics.
06.11.2025
AI, Ethics and Society Workshop
Short Recap
On 29 October 2025, the workshop “AI, Ethics and Society” brought together researchers and practitioners from the Junges Kolleg | BAdW, Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML) and bidt – Graduate Center für Postdocs to explore how artificial-intelligence algorithms shape individual and collective memory.