News Archive
Multidrug-resistant bacteria are among the greatest medical challenges of our time. To significantly improve the development of new antibiotics, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarland University, the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), and the biotechnology company smartbax GmbH have launched the collaborative project OptimAIze.The project combines state-of-the-art artificial intelligence methods with innovative biological testing procedures [...]
Professor Martina Maggio has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), one of Europe’s most prestigious research funding programmes. With funding of up to €2.5 million, Professor Maggio aims to improve the certification of the safety of computer-controlled systems that are subject to timing fluctuations during operation.
MPI-SWS Scientific Director Rupak Majumdar has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant worth approximately €2.5 million for his project „Pascal: Formal Performance Analysis at Scale“. The project aims to develop new mathematical foundations and practical tools for analyzing and verifying the performance and resilience of large-scale distributed computer systems.
Teaching humanoid robots not only to see like humans but also to understand what they see is an immensely complex challenge because in the real world, everything is constantly changing. Jan Eric Lenssen wants to teach machines to see, giving them a visual understanding modelled on human perception. On 22 June, Saarland’s Minister of Finance and Science Jakob von Weizsäcker appointed Lenssen to a professorship in computer science at Saarland University.
The ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) has awarded their 2026 Distinguished Service Award to MPI-SWS Scientific Director Derek Dreyer. The award [...]
The new UN report on the environmental impact of AI has reignited the debate over data center resource consumption. The focus is on energy demand, water consumption, and CO₂ emissions during the training and operation of generative AI systems. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Maaß, head of the DFKI research division Smart Service Engineering and holder of the Chair of Business Informatics at Saarland University, analyzes the study and points to ESCADE as a concrete approach for greater transparency and efficiency.
Paris/Berlin, 18 June 2026 – The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) are taking their existing partnership to the next level: today the two leading research organizations signed an agreement at Vivatech in Paris to establish an open, binational French – German Center on Artificial Intelligence.
The Soofi consortium presents initial performance results for “Soofi S,” the first building block of a European AI model family. The project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy as part of the IPCEI-CIS / 8ra initiative, aims to develop high-performance foundation models on European infrastructure, offering businesses, public administration, research institutions, and start-ups a transparent alternative to non-European models.
MPI-SWS researchers Travis Hance, Laila Elbeheiry, and Derek Dreyer–along with their collaborator Yusuke Matsushita–have received a PLDI 2026 Distinguished Paper Award for their paper “VerusBelt: A Semantic Foundation for Verus’s Proof-Oriented Extensions to the Rust Type System.”
At the international high-tech and startup trade fair Vivatech in Paris (June 17–20, 2026), the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the French computer science institute Inria will showcase their close research collaboration in the German Park (Hall 7.3, Booth 3E14) and send a strong signal for the future by establishing a Franco-German AI center. The goal is to strengthen high-performance European AI and further advance the transfer of AI technologies to the economy.
MPI-SWS researchers Tung Phung and Adish Singla, jointly with colleagues from the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota and Microsoft, have received a Best Paper Award at the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE TS 2026), for their paper titled Closing the Loop: An Instructor-in-the-Loop AI Assistance System for Supporting Student Help-Seeking in Programming Education. At SIGCSE TS 2026, only 9 papers were given this award out of 174 accepted papers. Congratulations!
Starting next winter semester, students will be able to enrol on the new Master’s degree programme in Quantum Information Theory (QIT) at Saarland University. The M.Sc. programme, which is taught in English, allows students to acquire knowledge and skills at the intersection of mathematics, computer science and physics – equipping them with the tools required to work with the key technologies that will be shaping our digital future.
The future of European industry will not be shaped solely by whether Europe can keep pace with the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Its competitiveness will depend above all on how successfully AI can be transferred from the digital domain into the physical world – into robots, production lines, logistics systems, and other technologies that underpin everyday life. This challenge was at the heart of the international RICAIP Days 2026, hosted in Prague by the Czech Institute of Informatics, [...]
Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools are becoming increasingly indispensable in chemistry research laboratories and in industry. At Saarland University, two researchers from chemistry and computer science are working together to develop a teaching concept that will introduce chemistry students to data-driven methods early on in their studies and equip them with the tools to meet the changing demands of science and industry.
How do software developers respond when they come across code they do not intuitively understand? Neuropsychologists have now explored this question by recording brain activity alongside eye movements. A team of psycholinguists then compared the findings with established patterns from natural language processing and identified some surprising parallels. The interdisciplinary team from Saarland University and Chemnitz University of Technology has now published its study in Scientific Reports.
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