The Max Planck Insitute for Informatics was founded in 1988, by the founding director Kurt Mehlhorn. The insitute officially began research in 1990. After founding, Mehlhorn directed the "Algorithms and Complexity" department until it was passed on to the current director Danupon Nanongkai. Harald Ganzinger, who joined the institute shortly after founding, led the "Logic of Programming" department until his death in 2004. A third department, “Computer Graphics”, followed in 1999 under the direction of Hans-Peter Seidel. Thomas Lengauer then joined in 2001 to direct the “Computational Biology and Applied Algorithmics” department. In October 2003 the department “Databases and Information Systems” was established under the leadership of Gerhard Weikum. The department "Computer Vision and Machine Learning" was formed in 2010 with Bernt Schiele as the director. Following that, the department "Internet Architecture" was created in 2018 with head Anja Feldmann. In 2021 the department "Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence" was set up under the direction of Christian Theobalt. In addition to the previously named departments, the Institute is also home to two independent research groups: The group "Automation of Logic" was established September 2005 by Christoph Weidenbach and the group "Network and Cloud Systems" was started in 2020 by Yiting Xia.