Ziel des UdS-KI-Tages für Studierende im Innovation Center ist es, das Thema Künstliche Intelligenz im Studienkontext und den Copilot Chat speziell für Studierende vorzustellen. Die vorläufige Agenda (ca. 9:30 – 15:00 Uhr) beinhaltet Fachvorträge von Microsoft.

Geplante Themen sind:

• News from the Valley – Überblick über die neuesten Entwicklungen aus dem Silicon Valley zu KI und Co.
• AI & Careers – Karriereperspektiven: Wie KI die Arbeitswelt verändert, welche Skills gefragt sind und wie man in Big Tech oder AI-Startups einsteigt
• Beiträge von UdS-Vertreterinnen und -Vertretern zum Einsatz von KI-Lösungen (z.B. Tutor-Bots) und KI-Projekten (z.B. UdS Info-Bot).

Das Programm wird durch interaktive Elemente („Spot the Fake – KI‑Bilder & Täuschung; Bewusstsein für Risiken von KI“) und Networking-Möglichkeiten ergänzt.

Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer können einen Nachweis erhalten.

More Information:

https://www.uni-saarland.de/forschen/quantentechnologien.html

Questions answered:

Prof. Dr. Moritz Weber
Tel.: 0681-302-2556
E-Mail: weber(at)math.uni-sb.de

All large language models are currently based on the so-called Transformer architecture. This architecture is modeled after the human ability to focus on relevant information and ignore less important details. Michael Hahn, Professor of Computational Linguistics at Saarland University, was able to mathematically prove that Transformers fail at tasks in which every part of the input is relevant to the output. Thus, changing even a single character can alter the correct result. This allows the computational linguist and his interdisciplinary team at the Saarland Informatics Campus to gain theoretical insights that can be used to better predict the strengths and weaknesses of large language models.

Just recently, Michael Hahn received 1.4 million euros from the German Research Foundation for his research at the intersection of machine learning and computational linguistics, to establish an Emmy Noether Research Group (see press release dated November 13, 2025). The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Award is considered one of the most prestigious prizes in the German-speaking world for early-career researchers. It is endowed with 200,000 euros, intended to support the laureates in pursuing their scientific careers. The prize is named after the physicist and former president of the German Research Foundation, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, and has been awarded since 1977.

Background
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize is considered one of the most prestigious awards for early-career researchers in the German-speaking area. It comes with a prize of 200,000 euros, intended to support the laureates in pursuing their academic careers. The prize is named after the physicist and former president of the German Research Foundation, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, and has been awarded since 1977.

Background Saarland Informatics Campus
1,000 researchers (including 540 doctoral candidates) from more than 80 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for computer science in Germany and Europe. Four world-renowned research institutes, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the Center for Bioinformatics as well as Saarland University with three departments and 24 degree programs cover the entire spectrum of computer science.

Further information:

Press release from the German Research Foundation 

Information on the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize

Persönliche Webseite von Professor Michael Hahn: Professor Michael Hahn’s personal website: https://www.mhahn.info

For further inquiries, please contact:

Prof. Dr. Michael Hahn
Chair of Language, Computation, and Cognition
Tel. 0681 302-4343
Email: mhahn(at)lst.uni-saarland.de

Experten bewerten Gebäudebestände mit KI und Mixed Reality

Eine große Herausforderung beim Urban Mining in Immobilien ist das fehlende Wissen über Art, Menge und Qualität der zu bergenden Bauprodukte. Hier setzt das Forschungsprojekt MIRAKEL an. In dem Verbundprojekt aus Industrie und Forschung entwickeln die Projektpartner ein innovatives System, das es Experten mithilfe von künstlicher Intelligenz und Mixed Reality ermöglicht, anthropogene Lager in Immobilien präzise und umfassend zu bewerten. Durch die gesteigerte Transparenz über die vorhandenen Bestände und die nötigen Rückbauschritte soll sich Urban Mining zukünftig von der reinen Bergung von Rohstoffen lösen. Das Ziel besteht darin, auch Bauteile, Bauelemente und Komponenten gezielt zurückzugewinnen, um eine möglichst hochwertige Anschlussnutzung der Bauprodukte zu erreichen und Urban Mining zu einem zentralen Baustein einer ressourceneffizienten, klimaneutralen Bauwirtschaft zu machen.

„Mit MIRAKEL machen wir den Wert der verborgenen Rohstoffe in Gebäuden sichtbar und wirtschaftlich nutzbar“, heißt es aus dem Projektteam. „So wird Rückbau vom Kostenfaktor zur Ressourcenquelle für die Bauwirtschaft von morgen.“

Sieben Partner entwickeln Prototyp für die Praxis

Das Projekt wird im Rahmen der Förderung „Ressourceneffiziente Kreislaufwirtschaft – Urban Mining: Erschließung anthropogener Lager als Rohstoffquelle“ durch das Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (BMFTR) gefördert. Während der 30-monatigen Projektlaufzeit arbeiten die sieben Projektpartner Concular GmbH, Wilhelm Knepper GmbH & Co. KG, ryze technologies GmbH, Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH, SRH University, Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH (DFKI) und CIRCULAR STRUCTURAL DESIGN an einem ersten Prototyp des Assistenzsystems, der in ausgewählten Immobilien praktisch erprobt und wissenschaftlich evaluiert wird. Das Projekt ist im November 2025 gestartet und läuft bis einschließlich April 2028.

The EATCS Fellows Program was established by the association in 2014 to recognize outstanding EATCS members for their scientific achievements in the field of Theoretical Computer Science.

Further Information: 

• https://eatcs.org/index.php/component/content/article/1-news/3028–eatcs-fellows-class-of-2026-named
• https://www.eatcs.org/index.php/eatcs-fellows

“Study Computer Science in Germany” on Thursday, 26 March 2026 at 16:00 (CET)

“Study Electrical Engineering in Germany” on Thursday, 23 April 2026 at 16:00 (CET)

Study Computer Science in Germany (Master’s): Online Webinar with Saarland University & DFKI 

Thinking about a Master’s in Computer Science or in Visual Computing in Germany and not sure how programs work, what admissions look for, or how to compare universities? Join the English webinar “Study Computer Science in Germany” on Thursday, 26 March 2026 at 16:00 (CET).

You’ll get a clear overview of how Computer Science Master’s programs in Germany are structured — and you’ll be able to ask questions directly to university representatives to compare options and find the right fit.

What we’ll cover (and what you can ask):

• What a CS Master’s in Germany typically looks like (focus areas, workload, expectations)

• Admissions basics — and what makes a strong application

• How to compare programs across universities (university vs. university of applied sciences)

• Live Q&A with program representatives

Saarland University & DFKI contribution:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Philipp Slusallek (Saarland University; Scientific Director at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)) will introduce the Master’s programs M.Sc. Computer Science and M.Sc. Visual Computing.

Date & time: Thursday, 26 March 2026, 16:00 (CET)
Language: English
Format: Online (Zoom) | approx. 60–75 minutes

Registration / event page:
https://www.mygermanuniversity.com/de/webinar/2026-03-26/study-computer-science-in-germany/1035

The “traveling salesman problem” is probably the best-known example of a so-called optimization problem that poses major challenges for mathematicians: as the number of stops increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to calculate the shortest possible route that visits all locations and returns to the starting point. But such optimization problems don’t just affect salespeople—they appear everywhere in daily life, for example in manufacturing complex products or calculating prices.

Fortunately, we have computers today that can solve such problems in no time. Or do we? Not always. Even today, classical computers can often only approximate solutions to difficult mathematical problems rather than solve them completely—and often only with long runtimes. Their algorithms are typically based on real-world problems and exploit their structure heuristically. “That works surprisingly well. Algorithms that are theoretically slower can still be faster in practice,” explains Peter P. Orth, Professor of Theoretical Physics of Quantum Information at Saarland University. However, despite their quality, these solutions are often just the best possible under given circumstances—essentially: “We make the best of it; more isn’t currently possible.” But that is not enough for Peter P. Orth, his colleague Markus Bläser (a computer scientist specializing in complexity and algorithms), the industry partners Infineon and BMW, and the quantum start-up planqc.

In a new research project called “QIAPO – Quantum-informed approximate optimization on NISQ and partially fault-tolerant quantum computers,” they are therefore taking a new approach: a special quantum computer based on neutral atoms, built by planqc in Garching, will first “shrink” highly complex logistical tasks—such as those arising in the production and distribution of cars or computer chips—so that classical computers can handle them more effectively using proven algorithms. Quantum computers can outperform classical ones in certain cases because their computing units, qubits, can exist in a superposition of states 0 and 1, whereas classical bits can only be either 0 or 1. This makes quantum computers particularly well suited for solving or simplifying highly complex mathematical problems that would overwhelm classical systems.

Once the “jungle” of a mathematical problem has been cleared, researchers can continue working on classical computers using well-established algorithms to solve the now much smaller problem. However, even this hybrid approach will not yield perfect solutions for the kinds of challenges faced by companies like Infineon and BMW, Orth notes—which is why the project includes “approximate optimization” in its title. In other words, the goal is to use a combination of quantum and classical algorithms to improve solutions incrementally. For example, if a problem can currently be solved with 80% accuracy, the hybrid approach might improve this to 85% or even 95%. “This is where quantum computers could ‘fill the gap’ to increase accuracy and achieve a quantum advantage,” says Orth.

“The QIAPO project not only shows how far quantum computing has already progressed,” says Dr. Martin Kiffner, Head of Algorithms at planqc. “We are already demonstrating how highly complex, industry-relevant challenges can be translated into quantum algorithms that can ultimately be tested on quantum computers.”

Physicist Peter P. Orth describes a realistic goal of the project: “Over the next three years, we won’t immediately solve the biggest problems. But we will very likely find out whether our approach can fundamentally solve such problems—and then continue exploring them further.” After all, even small efficiency gains in complex industrial production and distribution processes could have significant impact. As the project description notes: “Even minor resource savings can lead to substantial financial effects at large production scales.”

At a glance:
The project “QIAPO – Quantum-informed approximate optimization on NISQ and partially fault-tolerant quantum computers” has been funded since January 2026 for three years with €2.33 million by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. It is coordinated by Prof. Dr. Peter P. Orth (Saarland University). Other participants include Prof. Dr. Markus Bläser (Saarland University), BMW AG, Infineon Technologies AG, and planqc GmbH. planqc develops quantum computers based on neutral atoms—the fastest path toward scalable quantum processors for industrial applications. Founded in April 2022 in Garching near Munich by Alexander Glätzle, Sebastian Blatt, and Johannes Zeiher, planqc is the first spin-off of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics within the Munich Quantum Valley initiative.

Related Links:
www.quantensysteme.info/projektatlas/projekte/q/qiapo
www.planqc.eu

More Information:
Prof. Dr. Peter P. Orth
Tel.: (0681) 3024960
E-Mail: peter.orth(at)uni-saarland.de
Webseite: https://www.uni-saarland.de/lehrstuhl/orth.html

This text has been machine translated from the German and has undergone no postediting.

Max Planck researchers investigate “quantum neural networks” as a building block for more efficient visual-computing models.

The “4D Quantum Computer Vision” research group at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, is investigating the potential of quantum computing for computer-based image processing, also known as visual computing. A new hybrid model, developed together with partners from the University of Udine and the University of Naples Federico II, combines a so-called “quantum neural network” with a classical neural network. In tests on established metrics the model outperforms previous methods while using significantly fewer network connections and requiring a shorter training time.

Researching technologies that cannot yet keep up with the state of the art today, but have the potential to transform entire fields tomorrow—that is the aim of basic research. One such technology is quantum computing. Quantum computers are still rare, difficult to access, and in many applications slower than classical computers. At the same time, quantum computers promise major advantages thanks to their special properties: the ability to represent many quantum states simultaneously (superposition), and to link qubits into a coherent shared state so they can no longer be regarded as independent of one another (entanglement). Investigating where these properties can be beneficial is a new and active field of research.

At the MPI for Informatics, the “4D Quantum Computer Vision” group led by Dr. Vladislav Golyanik is exploring how quantum computing could advance computer-based image processing, particularly in visual computing and 3D computer vision. “On the one hand, we look for alternative ‘quantum solution paths’ for problems that are already known. Beyond that, of course, we also look for entirely new research questions that can benefit from quantum computing,” explains Vladislav Golyanik. The goal is ambitious: in the future, the team aims to reconstruct arbitrary real-world scenes photorealistically on a computer from just a few recorded images—and from novel, unrecorded viewpoints—even when objects in the scene move or deform. Such tasks are extremely computationally intensive, pushing even modern high-performance computers to their limits.

To address this challenge, the group is currently working on so-called “quantum neural networks” (QNNs). In such models, quantum circuits, usually simulated on classical hardware, are treated as trainable functions, similar to classical machine learning, and are adjusted using data-driven training and optimization methods.

In a recently published paper titled “Quantum Visual Fields with Neural Amplitude Encoding,” presented in December 2025 at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), the team—consisting of PhD student Shuteng Wang, Dr. Vladislav Golyanik, and Professor Christian Theobalt, Scientific Director of the Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence department at the MPI for Informatics—describes a method for processing image data so that QNNs can handle it more efficiently. To this end, the researchers developed an initial hybrid model that combines a classical neural network with a QNN to encode input signals in 2D or 3D, as well as collections of such signals.

Building on this, a follow-up project titled “QNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields on a Simulated Gate-based Quantum Computer” was carried out together with partners from the University of Udine and the University of Naples Federico II. In this project, the researchers developed a hybrid model for “novel-viewpoint rendering,” that is, synthesizing new viewpoints of objects or scenes that were not contained in the original data. In experiments, the new model achieved comparable or better quality on the established PSNR metric than previous approaches, while using less than half the required network parameters and requiring fewer training steps. “For our tests, we simulated the quantum circuits on classical hardware. That meant the absolute training time was higher, but we were able to reduce the number of training steps, which could indicate shorter training times on ‘real’ quantum hardware in the future,” explains Golyanik. “QNeRF” is currently publicly available as a preprint.

Additionally, the work of the research group 4D Quantum Computer Vision is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the project “Applied Quantum Computing for Computer Vision.”

Professor Christian Theobalt says: “For us, quantum computing is a bet on the future, a high-risk, high-gain approach: we want to understand early on which fundamental principles of quantum computing could truly be useful, so that we are scientifically and technologically prepared when quantum resources become more widely available.”

In the long term, the ability to reconstruct complex scenes more efficiently could enable applications in areas such as robotics, manufacturing, medicine, or film and visual effects—anywhere computers need to represent reliable 3D information from camera footage and compute novel viewpoints.

Original publications:

Wang, Shuteng; Theobalt, Christian; and Golyanik, Vladislav. “Quantum Visual Fields with Neural Amplitude Encoding.” Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025.
Project page: https://4dqv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/QVF/

Lizzio Bosco, Daniele; Wang, Shuteng; Serra, Giuseppe; and Golyanik, Vladislav. “QNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields on a Simulated Gate-based Quantum Computer.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.05250, 2026.
Project page: https://4dqv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/QNeRF/

Further information:

Website  of the 4D Quantum Computer Vision group: https://4dqv.mpi-inf.mpg.de/

DFG project “Applied Quantum Computer Vision”: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/534951134?language=en

Scientific contact:
Dr. Vladislav Golyanik
Research Group Leader, MPI for Informatics
E-Mail: golyanik@mpi-inf.mpg.de

Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt
Scientific Director, MPI for Informatics

Editor and press contact:
Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik
Tel: +49 681 9325 4509
E-Mail: pzs@mpi-inf.mpg.de

The school will focus on deepening understanding of biological systems by combining modern biomedical technologies with innovative approaches to artificial intelligence. The aim is to train a new generation of scientists who will develop algorithms that can learn, explain, and predict the principles of living systems and use these findings for molecular design.

People increasingly use artificial intelligence today in important decisions that have a major impact on people’s lives – from improving medical diagnosis and increasing efficiency in research to supporting data-based decision-making in business and administration. However, AI cannot ‘understand’ like a human being why something happens or how damage could be avoided by acting differently, for example when driving an autonomous vehicle or in robotics. ‘Many real-world systems today are based on AI, but their actions are difficult to interpret because we often don’t know exactly what the neural networks are calculating in the background. This means that IT systems are not particularly reliable and are difficult to manage when they have to comply with safety regulations, for example,” says Sara Magliacane.

The computer scientist therefore wants to research at Saarland University how ideas of causality can be used to make complex AI models safer and more reliable. Among other things, the focus is on the large language models on which ChatGPT and similar programs are based. It will also look at so-called vision language models, in which AI is trained to link text data and visual data such as images and videos. Another focus will be on ’embodied AI,’ which can be used to program care robots, for example, to ‘understand’ information from their environment and translate it into their own actions.

Sara Magliacane’s areas of focus enrich the research environment at the Saarland Informatics Campus in many ways. They are particularly well suited to the Research Training Group ‘Neuroexplicit Models for Language Processing, Image Recognition and Action Decisions’, in which several computer science research institutes in the region are involved alongside Saarland University and which will continue to receive funding from the German Research Foundation until 2028.

Short CV of Sara Magliacane 

Sara Magliacane has been an assistant professor at the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab at the University of Amsterdam since 2020. From 2019 to 2025, she was also a researcher at the renowned MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), where she was IBM’s principal investigator for several projects in collaboration with the MIT faculty. Born in Italy, she completed her master’s degree at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy) and received her Ph.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) in 2017. She then spent two years conducting research at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Centre before moving to the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and the University of Amsterdam.

The Harlan D. Mills Award is presented by the international engineering association IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and recognizes long-standing and impactful research contributions to software development. Andreas Zeller is being honored for his lasting contributions to software debugging, program analysis, mining software repositories, and automated test generation.

The Harlan D. Mills Award will be presented to Andreas Zeller in April at the International Conference on Software Engineering in Rio de Janeiro. IEEE has more than 500,000 members from over 190 countries. It publishes about one third of the world’s technical literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics, and supports more than 2,000 conferences each year.

Background Saarland Informatics Campus:
900 scientists (including 400 PhD students) and about 2,500 students from more than 80 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for computer science in Europe. Four world-renowned research institutes cover the entire spectrum of computer science, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the Center for Bioinformatics as well as Saarland University with three departments and 24 degree programs.

This text was machine translated from the German with no human editing.

They published their findings in the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications.

“Flights to the International Space Station ISS place a strain on astronauts in several respects. The rocket launch, with its enormous speed and the corresponding pressure on the body, causes stress; weightlessness alters blood circulation and causes the body to age differently. Radiation exposure in space is also increased,” says Andreas Keller, Professor of Clinical Bioinformatics at Saarland University. His research team examined what exactly changes in biological processes in space by analyzing so-called microRNAs—short, non-coding segments of ribonucleic acid (RNA). These regulate the implementation of genetic information within cells. “For this purpose, blood samples from astronauts, such as those taken during earlier space missions for gene analyses as part of NASA’s Twin Study, were not sufficient. Instead, we required tissue samples from mammals,” explains Andreas Keller.

During previous ISS missions, NASA therefore sent several mice into space. These mice were three and eight months old and could be compared with age-matched mice on Earth. The Saarbrücken research team, which worked closely with colleagues at the renowned Stanford University, received 686 small RNA samples from NASA. These samples came from 13 different organs of mice that had spent at least three weeks aboard the International Space Station. “This generated enormous volumes of gene sequencing data, which we analyzed using our bioinformatic methods. These analyses, which built on our many years of experience with microRNAs, took more than a year to complete,” explains Andreas Keller, who also leads a research group at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland.

Weightlessness leads to symptoms similar to degenerative diseases

The Saarbrücken scientists focused on how tissue in the heart, brain, spleen, and thymus, as well as in the digestive tract, changes under space conditions. “We found that the physiological effects of spaceflight on humans are considerable. Prolonged stays in weightlessness lead to symptoms similar to degenerative diseases observed on Earth. These include muscle atrophy and bone loss, a weakened cardiovascular system, and changes in the immune system,” explains Andreas Keller. In addition, the team observed that organs age differently in weightlessness, suggesting that astronauts may experience accelerated aging. “These effects intensify with the duration of the mission, which is an important consideration for future missions to Mars and beyond, which would last significantly longer. The goal should now be to identify biomarkers and therapeutic targets through further research in order to mitigate the negative effects on astronauts,” says Andreas Keller.

The research results were published in the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications. The first authors are Friederike Grandke and Shusruto Rishik. The work was conducted under the leadership of Professor Andreas Keller (Saarland University) and Professor Tony Wyss-Coray (Stanford University). A further publication on the identified gene sequencing patterns is planned for the spring.

Original publication:

Friederike Grandke, Shusruto Rishik, Viktoria Wagner, Annika Engel, Nicole Ludwig, Kruti Calcuttawala, Fabian Kern, Verena Keller, Marcin Krawczyk, Louis Stodieck, Virginia Ferguson, Amanda Roberts, Eckart Meese, Nicholas Schaum, Steven Quake, Tony Wyss-Coray & Andreas Keller:

“MiRNAs shape mouse age-independent tissue adaptation to spaceflight via ECM and developmental pathways” in Nature Communications 17, 1387 (2026):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68737-1

Further Information:

https://www.ccb.uni-saarland.de/

https://www.helmholtz-hips.de/de/forschung/people/person/prof-dr-andreas-keller/

Contact for Inquiries:

Prof. Dr. Andreas Keller
Tel. +49 681 302 68611
Mail: andreas.keller(at)ccb.uni-saarland.de

With the 2nd Trusted AI Day, Saarbrücken has once again positioned itself as a central meeting place for discourse on trustworthy artificial intelligence. Representatives from research, business, and politics gathered at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) to discuss current developments, key challenges, and concrete solutions in the field of trusted AI.

You can find the list of most-downloaded PACMPL papers in 2025 here: https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmpl/announcements

Read more about Tree Borrows here and here.

Congratulations to all our POPL authors!

• • A Verified High-Performance Composable Object Library for Remote Direct Memory Access
    Guillaume Ambal , George Hodgkins, Mark Madler, Gregory Chockler, Brijesh Dongol, Joe Izraelevitz, Azalea Raad, Viktor Vafeiadis

• • Bounded Treewidth, Multiple Context-Free Grammars, and Downward ClosuresRemote
    C. Aiswarya, Pascal Baumann, Prakash Saivasan, Lia Schütze, Georg Zetzsche

• • Endangered by the Language But Saved by the Compiler: Robust Safety via Semantic Back-Translation
    Niklas Mück, Aina Linn Georges,Derek Dreyer, Deepak Garg, Michael Sammler

• • General Decidability Results for Systems with Continuous Counters
    A. R. Balasubramanian, Matthew Hague, Rupak Majumdar, Ramanathan S. Thinniyam, Georg Zetzsche

• • Verifying Almost-Sure Termination for Randomized Distributed Algorithms
    Constantin Enea, Rupak Majumdar, Harshit Jitendra Motwani, V.R. Sathiyanarayana

The ACM is the largest and most important international scientific professional society for computer science. For the year 2026, only 71 new ACM Fellows were selected worldwide; they will be officially honored at an award ceremony on June 13 in San Francisco. The new Fellows were nominated by their colleagues for their outstanding achievements through technical innovation and their contributions to the field. This year’s award recipients come from 14 countries and are among the more than 100,000 members of the ACM worldwide. ACM Fellows serve as ambassadors of the organization and are often asked to make their expertise available to the media, public authorities, and industry leaders.

The research focus of Sven Apel, Professor of Software Engineering at Saarland University, lies in developing methods, tools, and theories with which reliable, efficient, and maintainable software can be constructed and analyzed. For him, the human being as a software developer is at the center, and he also dedicates himself to various interdisciplinary research questions.

Short Biography

Sven Apel studied computer science for a diploma degree at the University of Magdeburg from 1996 to 2002. He completed his doctorate there from 2003 to 2007, also in computer science. His dissertation (awarded summa cum laude) received several prestigious prizes. From 2010 to 2013, he led the Emmy Noether Research Group “Secure and Efficient Software Product Lines” at the University of Passau, before being appointed professor in 2013 within the framework of the DFG Heisenberg Program. Since 2019, Sven Apel has been Professor of Computer Science with a focus on Software Engineering at Saarland University. Since 2022, he has also led the project “Brains on Code,” funded by the European Research Council (ERC Advanced Grant). The project aims to investigate the foundations of program comprehension using neurophysiological methods. Sven Apel is the author or co-author of more than two hundred peer-reviewed publications.

This text was machine translated from the German with no human editing.

Fewer than 0.1% of voting IEEE members receive this prestigious recognition each year. Andreas Zeller is being honored for his outstanding contributions to the analysis of software and its development processes. He has devoted his scientific career to software security: Zeller’s research focuses primarily on automated debugging, mining software repositories, specification mining, and security testing. The long-term international impact of his research is evidenced by a total of nine “Test of Time Awards,” which recognize the enduring influence of individual research contributions. Zeller is also one of the few researchers to have received two ERC Advanced Grants from the European Research Council. Andreas Zeller is an ACM Fellow, a member of the Academia Europaea, and a recipient of both the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award and the ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award.

Commenting on his induction as an IEEE Fellow, Andreas Zeller said: “I am very proud that my colleagues have selected me for this special honor from the IEEE. The stated goal of the IEEE is to place technological progress at the service of humanity. In this light, I also see my own work in software security: people need secure applications to participate in the digital world with confidence.”

The IEEE has more than 500,000 members from over 190 countries. It publishes about one third of the scholarly literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics, and supports more than 2,000 conferences annually. The grade of “Fellow” is reserved for experienced IEEE members who have demonstrated an exceptional record of accomplishments in their respective disciplines. Appointment as an IEEE Fellow is preceded by a rigorous evaluation process. Of 1,268 nominations for 2026, only 350 members were ultimately elevated to Fellow status.

This text was machine translated from the German with no human editing.

The world’s leading professional society dedicated to the advancement of artificial intelligence recognizes individuals as Fellows who have typically made substantial and sustained contributions to the field over a period of at least ten years. Ingmar Weber is particularly active in the computational social science community and in the organization of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM). Ingmar Weber is one of only about ten German researchers to date who have been named Fellows of the U.S.-based AAAI.

The achievements of AAAI Fellows range from groundbreaking advances in the theory of artificial intelligence to exceptional accomplishments in AI technology and its applications. The newly elected Fellows have been announced on the AAAI website and will be officially inducted on January 22.

This text was machine translated from the German with no human editing.

Alexander Koller was honored “for his fundamental contributions to computational semantics, grammar formalisms, and neuro-symbolic architectures.” The Fellows Program recognizes ACL members whose contributions to the field are exceptional in terms of scientific and technical excellence, service to the association and the community, or educational and outreach activities.

Further information: ACL Fellows 2025

This text has been machine translated from the German and has undergone no postediting.

Meet Saarland University’s LaLa Lab. Directed by Professor Tomohiro Nagashima, LaLa Lab explores how we learn, how AI can improve learning, and how to make sure learners keep their agency in a society where automated learning is starting to become the status quo. To achieve this, the lab stands at the intersection of human-computer Interaction, the learning sciences, cognitive science, and psychology.

As one of Saarland University’s recently selected Henriette Herz Scouts, Professor Nagashima has been preparing to welcome three international Humboldt Research Fellows. In this interview, he shares his vision for the fellowship, criteria he seeks in applicants, the role of diversity and interdisciplinarity in the field of learning sciences, and the future directions of LaLa Lab.

Could you briefly introduce LaLa Lab and its activities?

“Happy to do so! We’re still a young research group, small but growing at a fast pace. I’m starting my fourth year at the university. LaLa Lab (Learning to Adapt, Learning with Agency Lab) is highly interdisciplinary in its approach and outcomes – that is, both our methodological approaches and publication venues. We use advanced technologies, such as AI-based tutoring systems, to understand how people learn in complex ways. At the same time, we use these technologies to empower learners so that they can learn with agency and adaptively.

Our project AlgeSPACE is designed to help high school students strategically decide which solution approaches they should use for solving systems of equations. At the same time, we collect various types of data to see how exactly human learning happens. This includes student interactions with the system, pre- and post-activity measures to see if students learn by using the system, and qualitative insights such as interviews and think-aloud responses to deeply investigate their experience with the system. 

A screenshot from AlgeSPACE.

For example, in our Mindful Math project, we also measure how a mindful, LLM-based conversation experience with our virtual fox agent can help students reduce their math anxiety while supporting their learning. 

A screenshot of the Mindful Math tutor.

To conduct research that is meaningful for both researchers and practitioners, we work very closely with school students, teachers, administrators, and parents in Saarland and beyond, also internationally in North America and Asia. Together, we co-design technologies that serve not only our research purposes but also teachers and students in real classrooms. Technologies like AlgeSPACE are freely and openly available, and have been used in everyday teaching activities.”

Could you share a bit about your vision or plans for bringing fellows into LaLa Lab over the next couple of years through this Humboldt Research Fellowship?

“When I applied for this opportunity to become a Henriette Herz Scout, I was hoping to make our lab even more interdisciplinary. We are already quite diverse — with students from computer science, educational technology, psychology, and even cultural studies — but I wanted to boost this strength further.

I plan to bring in three postdocs in the next few years, each with a different expertise. Since I work at the intersection of the learning sciences, human-computer interaction, and psychology/cognitive science, my idea is to select fellows from each of these disciplines to strengthen our approach, so they can also learn from each other and gain new skills from other disciplines in the lab.” 

What do you think separates the Humboldt Research Fellows, recruited through Henriette Herz Scouts, from other postdoc opportunities for international postdocs?

“One thing that I am committed to is giving the fellows a sense of what a PI’s job looks like. A particularly generous aspect of this program is that they get their own research funding of approximately 20,000 euros. My plan is to let them use this funding to simulate the experience of having a ‘mini’ lab within our lab.

They can decide what they want to do: have their own projects, decide who to hire, do recruiting and interviewing, figure out how to allocate their resources to run a project effectively… All this decision-making is something that regular postdocs wouldn’t necessarily get to experience. That’s one of the biggest opportunities I see. After two years, I hope that the three fellows will feel ready to lead their own labs with the skills they gained.” 

How do you see the fellowship support the career paths of the fellows, in addition to their research? 

“The fellows will be experiencing the PI role in a risk-free environment, because I’m still responsible for all the decision-making in the end. Personally, I jumped from finishing my PhD to a professor position. There are a lot of things you learn as you go — and I think I would’ve liked to get management and leadership experience in a risk-free environment as a postdoc. This opportunity will familiarize them with the different types of decisions a PI has to make, supporting a smoother transition when they become a PI.” 

While you’re reviewing applications, what are some qualities you pay attention to in a candidate?

“There are several aspects. One thing that I want to ensure — which is also aligned with the fellowship — is bringing international talent to Germany, especially those who might not otherwise have had the opportunity to come here. I tried to share this job opportunity through various channels — mailing lists, social media, conferences, academic societies, and personal connections — to reach talented candidates around the world.

Our lab is already quite diverse, but as I mentioned, we want to boost this strength even further. I’m happy to see that I’m getting applications from all over the world. I’m very excited about the different perspectives they will bring — they’re trained in different education systems and have diverse cultural views, which are important for my field of study and for running a diverse and inclusive lab. 

In addition, to further expand our interdisciplinarity, I didn’t focus on just one expertise when I made a job ad for the first Humboldt Fellow position. I decided to target broader fields, so applicants could bring expertise in designing systems, understanding human behaviors, analyzing complex data, and/or technical implementations. I wanted to see what they might be able to bring in, and that’s something you can’t really know until you get the applications. That’s why I’m interviewing potential candidates from different fields — to decide who to accept in the first round and who to accept next — so they effectively complement each other in terms of disciplinary and interdisciplinary skills when they join.

Last but not least, I’ve also emphasized leadership and management potential during the interviews and in the job listing, which candidates particularly liked. I want to see if they can be independent in coming up with research ideas, doing management tasks or mentoring students. To assess this, I asked applicants for a cover letter outlining an independent project idea that they would like to lead and manage in the lab.”

Do you have any criteria other than publications/academic record that could mark someone as a strong candidate? Any particular skills or mindsets that you might find specifically valuable in a postdoc working in LaLa Lab?

“Although these decisions can be difficult to articulate, something I always ask in interviews is candidates’ attitudes toward collaboration with people from different backgrounds. Since our lab collaborates across fields, it’s often necessary for candidates to be able to explain things from their background to someone who isn’t familiar with that concept. They need to communicate their work to people from design and technical backgrounds, as well as stakeholders in the community who may not know a lot about research. Doing community-based research in my field requires actively listening to others’ thoughts, effectively negotiating with people from different backgrounds and daily experiences, and finding solutions that satisfy all parties involved – this is very hard! 

In addition to this, I pay attention to their ability to mentor students and scaffold their learning, since supervision skills require time to develop and people have different mentoring styles. I want to know how they approach mentoring.” 

What kind of independence and freedom will fellows have when it comes to proposing and leading their own projects?

“In my lab, fellows can propose and work on their own projects based on their interests and research, as long as the project fits within the growth scope of the lab. The fellowship funding can be used for these independent projects, and I will be happy to help or compensate for anything the funding doesn’t cover, if needed. In addition to their own project,  I will also find an existing project where they can be integrated.

I think this is a nice opportunity; they can actually lead something independently while also becoming well integrated within the lab by getting involved in existing projects. This way, they learn how things are done here and meet the other lab members, while I can still provide guidance as they work on their own.”

What excites you most about welcoming new international researchers into LaLa Lab?

“Getting international people itself is very exciting. I come from Japan, but my training was in the USA, and now in Germany I see many advantages that people bring through their diverse training and cultural experiences. 

For example, the way we conduct design research with schools here is different from what I was used to in the USA. There are always new tactics and approaches to learn based on the cultural setting. Technologies are used in different ways across cultures. Teachers here have a different approach to research than their counterparts in the USA. These experiences give you a new perspective on how to adjust your approach to what’s in front of you.

At the same time, I want to learn from their experiences in other countries I’m less familiar with to see what other strategies we might be able to integrate in the lab. I think this will help the lab become more flexible and improve our approaches to conducting our work.”

What advice would you give to international researchers who might consider applying in the future?

“The hiring process is quite flexible. I can hire three postdocs over the next few years, with possible overlaps and different start dates. That’s why I’m planning to have another call sometime soon to bring in another person. 

One thing I can say is that our lab is growing not only in size but also in approach. As a lab, we’re trying to adapt our strategies to make sure we move in the right direction and build on existing work. So, future candidates may discover opportunities that are more relevant to them if they keep up with our work.

So, my advice: check my website and stay updated!”

What kind of projects and directions are you hoping to head in Lala Lab in the next few years?

“That’s a big question. In the lab, our work is organized around several pillars, and each of them has multiple sub-projects. For example, something we’re increasingly focusing on is how complex dynamic interactions happen between teachers, students, and AI systems used in classroom settings. There’s a lot of dynamic decision-making involved in the process.

This decision-making is hard to understand, but also very interesting to explore. One thing that we’re prioritizing is ensuring that the human stakeholders, like teachers and students, keep their agency while making decisions, since technologies with ‘accurate’ models may attempt to detect the students’ emotional or cognitive state and make decisions for them (more AI control).

If that happens too much, sometimes it can take away important decision-making opportunities for students. Students might want to decide what topics to learn by themselves, instead of getting assigned one based on their previous performance. These types of decision-making opportunities help them become more metacognitive and self-regulated.

So that’s something we will discuss more in the future: how we can ensure that students and teachers control their own decision-making, and how to balance that control between AI systems and human stakeholders to use AI systems not only effectively but also ethically and sustainably.”

Editor’s note: The interviewee wishes to acknowledge the contributions of lab members Katharina Bonaventura, Mirella Hladký, Helene Nüttgens, Vera Rief, Mareike Silber, and Man “Echo” Su,  to the projects referenced.

Want to find out more about the research conducted in LaLa Lab? Visit their website.

Are you interested in creating ethical AI systems that support students? Are you an international researcher? Maybe you could be the next Henriette Herz fellow in one of Germany’s most interdisciplinary learning-science labs. Take a look at the application requirements.

Relevant pages:

Computer scientists at Saarland University develop customized learning software

Information about the Humboldt Research Fellowship

Editor:
Saarland Informatics Campus Team
Email: yagmur.akarsu@uni-saarland.de