History
The Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPI-INF) was established in 1988 and began its work in 1990, with Kurt Mehlhorn as its founding director. It was the first institute of the Max Planck Society, Germany’s premier research organization, dedicated entirely to basic research in computer science. In 1996, the Institute moved into its building on the campus of Saarland University.
Currently, a total of 140 scientists work at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, of whom 96 are doctoral students and 44 hold a doctoral degree. The MPI for Informatics conducts cutting-edge foundational research in key areas of computer science, ranging from the study of algorithms and logic to systems such as the Internet and multimodal areas like computer vision, computer graphics, databases and information systems, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Members of the Institute have received numerous awards and honours for their work, including the Leibniz Prize, fellowships from the Association for Computing Machinery, the Medal of the German Informatics Society, and membership in the Academia Europaea, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech).
After the Institute was founded, Kurt Mehlhorn headed the Algorithms and Complexity department. In 1991, Harald Ganzinger joined the Institute as the second director, leading the Programming Logics department until his death in 2004. A third department, Computer Graphics, followed in 1999, with Hans-Peter Seidel as the director. In 2001, Thomas Lengauer joined the Institute as Director of the Computational Biology and Applied Algorithmics department, serving in this position until his retirement in 2018. In October 2003, the Databases and Information Systems department was established under the direction of Gerhard Weikum, who led it until his retirement in 2023. In 2010, Bernt Schiele became Director of the newly established Computer Vision and Machine Learning department. In 2017, the Department of Internet Architecture began its work under the leadership of Anja Feldmann. In 2021, the Department of Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence was established, with Christian Theobalt as its Director. In 2022, Danupon Na Nongkai became a member of the Max Planck Society and joined the Institute as the new Director of the Algorithms and Complexity department.
In addition to the above-mentioned departments, three independent research groups work at the Institute: since 2005, the Automation of Logic group, headed by Christoph Weidenbach; since 2020, the Network and Cloud Systems group, led by Yiting Xia; and since 2024, the Multimodal Language Processing research group, headed by Vera Demberg.
In 2001, the International Max Planck Research School for Computer Science (IMPRS-CS) was startet at the MPI for Informatics in cooperation with Saarland University (UdS) and later included the MPI for Software Systems (MPI-SWS). Since 2020, IMPRS-CS has continued as the International Max Planck Research School on Trustworthy Computing (IMPRS-TRUST), with project partners MPI-INF, MPI-SWS, UdS, and RPTU Kaiserslautern.
From 2003 to 2020, the Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication established a cooperation between the Max Planck Society and Stanford University, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
From 2007 to 2019, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics was one of the core partners in the Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction, established by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative. Director Hans-Peter Seidel served as the cluster’s speaker.
From 2009 to 2018, MPI-INF was a central member of the Intel Visual Computing Institute (Intel VCI) at the Saarland Informatics Campus. The Intel VCI was a large-scale cooperation between the chip manufacturer Intel, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the MPI for Informatics, the MPI for Software Systems, and Saarland University.
In 2022, a long-term strategic research partnership between Google and MPI-INF was established with the Saarbrücken Research Center for Visual Computing, Interaction and Artificial Intelligence (VIA). The VIA Center is headed by founding director Christian Theobalt and co-director Bernt Schiele and is located at the MPI for Informatics.