News Archive
Dr. Yiting Xia and Dr. Thomas Leimkühler awarded ERC Starting Grants Whether it is novel digital models for representing the world or the development of new cloud infrastructures for artificial intelligence, the European Research Council (ERC) funds excellent pioneering research through Starting Grants. These grants support early-career researchers worldwide whose work has the potential to shape our society. This year, two members of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics are being awarded [...]
Large language models such as ChatGPT have become an integral part of everyday life for many people and businesses. They are being used, e.g., to gather information from multiple sources and to support complex planning processes. Yet these AI systems are not infallible and they continue to make mistakes – LLMs hallucinate and struggle to combine information in a logically rigorous manner. Computational linguist Michael Hahn has set out to strengthen the theoretical foundations of AI reasoning.
On August 26, 2026, three representatives from the department visited the Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium in Saarbrücken to present the Bachelor’s program in Language Science and the Language Science and Technology department to interested students during the Career Information Day.
MPI-SWS faculty member Derek Dreyer has received the Most Influential ICFP Paper Award for the 2016 paper “Higher-Order Ghost State,” co-authored with MPI-SWS alumnus Ralf Jung as well as Robert Krebbers and Lars Birkedal. The award recognises the paper’s lasting impact on the Iris program logic framework, which has become an important foundation for research on software verification. This award comes on top of the Most Influential POPL Paper Award for the Iris 1.0 paper (POPL’15) [...]
On 2 September at Saarland University’s Innovation Center (Building A2 1), the SOUNDS data project will demonstrate how satellite imagery and Google Maps reviews can provide insights into life across Saarland. These kinds of analyses could also support decision-making processes in Saarland. SOUNDS is receiving financial support for this work from the Saarland state government’s Transformation Fund.
The ddpp project (Decentralized Data Privacy Protocol) aims to make it easier for users to manage their privacy settings and to strengthen their digital sovereignty on the web. The Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, which is leading the consortium, and researchers at Saarland University are developing an open web protocol that will allow users to manage their privacy preferences across multiple services at a location of their choice.
How do you go from master’s to PhD to postdoc? Most postdocs would tell you it’s hard work, perseverance, and discipline. According to Anna Kukleva, it’s those, plus a bunch of happy accidents. Currently, she’s a research scientist at Meta. Before that, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Vision and Machine Learning department at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPI-INF).
On 5 August, Prof. Dr. Jörg Siekmann will celebrate his 85th birthday. A pioneer of the field of artificial intelligence in Germany, Siekmann served as a professor of computer science at Saarland University and director of the Deduction and Multi-Agent Systems Research Division at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).
Data centres are springing up all over the world – along with power stations designed to satisfy the energy demands of artificial intelligence. A research consortium led by Wolfgang Maaß (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence DFKI and Saarland University) found ways to reduce AI’s electricity consumption by up to 90 per cent using hardware and software technologies.
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 [...]
Saarland University is one of 20 higher education institutions in Germany that has been tasked with attracting top international talent in the fields of artificial intelligence and quantum technologies, with the goal of retaining these researchers in the country long-term and building Germany as a centre of scientific excellence.
The Saarbrücken Computer Science Research Days support the next generation of scientists with lectures, workshops, and insights into current computer science research. From June 24 to 26, 2026, Saarbrücken was once again a hub for young computer science enthusiasts from all over Germany. Since 2008, the Saarland Informatics Campus, as the host of the “Saarbrücker Forschungstage”, has been offering selected high school students the opportunity to delve deeper into the world of computer [...]
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.
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