Press Releases

New research area “Vision and Language Models (VLMs)” at the Saarbrücken Research Center for Visual Computing, Interaction and Artificial Intelligence under the direction of Professor Bernt Schiele

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the largest and most prestigious international scientific society in the field of computer science, has named Anja Feldmann, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken and Professor at Saarland University, an "ACM Fellow". This honors her influential contributions to the data-driven analysis of operational networks. Worldwide, only 68 new ACM Fellows were named for 2023.

Competitive programming is about solving highly complicated algorithmic problems in a team under time pressure. A group of computer science students from Saarland University has now won a gold medal in a major European competition, the best result achieved by a German university in almost 10 years. The top ranking qualifies the students for both the European Championships and the World Finals. The competitive programming has been a joint project of Saarland University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics for many years.

The vision has already been played out in many sci-fi series and novels: Instead of simple video calls, people talk to each other as digital avatars as if they were sitting in the same room, although, in reality, there are thousands of kilometers between them. For this kind of "telepresence" to be possible, the users need to have photorealistic digital images, which can be generated in real time with little computing effort. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken are working on the basic research behind such applications. As part of these efforts, they are building a cutting-edge computer science laboratory that will house some of the world's leading technical equipment.

Computer scientist Anja Feldmann, director at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, has been honored by the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) with the Konrad Zuse Medal. The Zuse Medal is the highest award in computer science in Germany. She is being honored for her outstanding achievements in the field of computer networks and her research on Internet traffic during the corona pandemic. The award will be presented on September 28 at the GI's INFORMATIK FESTIVAL 2023 in Berlin.

Imagine being able to try on different clothes on a virtual avatar and see how they look from every angle. Or adjusting the direction your pet is looking in your favorite photo. You could even change the perspective of a landscape picture. These types of photo edits have always been challenging, even for experts. A novel AI tool now promises that with just a few mouse clicks, anyone can achieve edits like these effortlessly. The method is being developed by a research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, in particular by the Saarbruecken Research Center for Visual Computing, Interaction, and Artifical Intelligence (VIA) located there.

Don't be surprised to see pills with unusual shapes in the near future. At first sight they may look funny, but they can release pharmaceuticals inside the body in a controlled manner. Using a combination of advanced computational methods and 3D printing, objects are produced that dissolve in liquids in a predetermined manner. A group of Computer Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, and the University of California at Davis, have invented a process that relies solely on the shape of the object for a time-controlled release. This will have important implications for the pharmaceutical industry, which has recently begun focusing sharply on 3D printing.

A novel approach from Saarbrücken, Germany, promises to overhaul a whole range of laser material processing techniques: Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics have developed an artificial intelligence-based method for this purpose that significantly speeds up some of the intermediate steps in production. There is an industry collaboration with TRUMPF. The high-tech company offers manufacturing solutions in the fields of machine tools and laser technology. On top of that, the team is now being funded by the EXIST startup program of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Action (BMWK) with around 800,000 euros to bring their development to market maturity.