Eurographics: Outstanding Technical Contribution Award for Prof. Christian Theobalt
Professor Christian Theobalt, Dept. 4 and leader of the group "Graphics, Vision & Video", was awarded with the Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contribution Award. He received receives it "for his almost 2 decades of pioneering work on methods for capturing and re-rendering models of the static and dynamic real world in motion from camera images."
Congratulation, Christian!
Cooperation with Ford in Saarlouis
The Ford plants at the Saarlouis site in the Saarland are breaking new ground in research collaboration with Saarland University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. As part of a cooperation project, the three institutions will implement a research approach specialized for the Saarlouis plant. The aim is to find intelligent solutions for reorienting production control at the Saarland site. With the help of multidimensional algorithms and artificial intelligence, production and work processes at the Saarlouis plant are to be further optimized.
Andreas Karrenbauer is the primary investigator from MPI Informatics.
Congratulation!
RG 1: Thoralf Skolem Award for Christoph Weidenbach
International Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE) Skolem Award for a CADE paper that has Passed the Test of Time, by being a Most Influential Paper in the field. presented for the paper “Towards an Automated Analysis of Security Protocols” published in the CADE-16 proceedings in 1999. The paper is recognised for two main contributions to automated deduction: first, its novel application of general theorem proving techniques to a key-exchange security protocol; and, second, its development of new decidability and undecidability results for fragments of monadic Horn theories.
Congratulations, Christoph!
D3: Anja Feldmann appointed member of acatech
Professor Anja Feldmann was appointed by acatech, the National Academy of Science and Engineering, as one of the new members. This academy, founded in 2002, provides policymakers and society with independent, evidence-based advice that is in the public interest. In doing so, the academy aims to promote sustainable growth through innovation.
Congratulations, Anja!
D5: "Leibniz Preis" for Thomas Neumann
Tthe DFG (German Science Foundation) awarded Thomas Neumann of TU Munich a Leibniz Preis, the highest scientific award of Germany. Thomas was a Senior Researcher in Gerhard Weikum's group from 2006 to 2010.
Congratulations to Thomas Neumann and Department 5!
D1: ERC Grant for Karl Bringmann
The European Research Council awards Karl Bringmann an ERC Starting Grant. During the next 5 years Karl can use the budget of 1.5 million Euros to pursue his research on Fine-Grained Complexity Theory / Linear Programming.
Congratulations, Karl!
Happy 70th Birthday, Kurt!
Kurt Mehlhorn, Founding Director of the MPI for Informatics, turned 70 on Aug 29th. August 30th was his last day as a Max Planck Director.
Happy retirement!
Karl Bringmann honored with “Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis”
The German Science Foundation (DFG) honors Karl Bringmann for his achievements in theoretical computer science; from the laudatio:
Karl Bringmann has written two master's dissertations, in computer science and mathematics, and published nine conference papers while he was still a student. As a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher, he presented his work on algorithms and complexity theory at many leading international congresses on theoretical computer science, where he was also invited on several occasions to serve on the programme committee. Bringmann has made extremely important contributions to his two fields of research, also addressing questions in many areas which are distantly related to one another. One of his most significant findings is the calculation of new fundamental ‘lower limits’ for important problems such as the Fréchet distance of curves.
Anja Feldmann receives Schelling Prize
The most important science prize of the Bavarian Academy of the sciences, the Schelling Prize, endowed with 25,000 Euros, goes 2018 to Anja Feldmann. She received the award for groundbreaking research that will adapt the Internet to the demands of the future. The award ceremony took place on Saturday, 08 Dec 2018 in Munich.
D3: Colloquium to celebrate Prof. Thomas Lengauer
25-May-2018: Colloquium to celebrate the work and scientific career of Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Lengauer on the occasion of his retirement.
D4: ERC Consolidator Grant for Christian Theobalt
Christian Theobalt received an ERC Consolidator Grant for his proposal "4-D Reconstruction of Real Scenes", see press release for details. He was also awarded with the 2017 "Karl Heinz Beckurts-Preis", one of Germany's most prestigious awards for basic research with a high practical relevance. (press release)
D3: Thomas Lengauer listed as "Highly Cited Researcher"
Thomas Lengauer was listed for the fourth year in a row (2014 - 2017) on the Clarivate Liste https://clarivate.com/hcr/ as Highly Cited Researcher (top 1%).
D1: "doctor honoris causa" for Kurt Mehlhorn
Kurt Mehlhorn was awarded with a doctor honoris causa by the Department of Computer Engineering & Informatics of the University of Patras.
D1: ERC Starting Grant for Christoph Lenzen
Christoph Lenzen received an ERC Starting Grant. His proposal "A Theory of Reliable Hardware" was accepted by the ERC. The project startet in August 2017 and will be funded for 5 years with a total sum of approx. 1.5 million Euros.
Eurographics Medal award ceremony at the 2017 annual meeting of the European Association of Computer Graphics in Lyon, France. EG president Prof. Dr. Marie-Paule Cani (ENS Paris), Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Seidel, Laudator Prof. Dr. Markus Gross (ETH Zürich). [right-to-left]
Photo: Eurographics 2017 / Eric Guérin.
D4: Hans-Peter Seidel awarded with Eurographics Medal 2017
Professor Dr. Hans-Peter Seidel was awarded with the 2017 Eurographics Medal in Gold.
D5: Treasure Hunt in the Data Jungle – Article about Pauli Miettinen
The webpage of Max Planck Society covers the work of Pauli Miettinen with this article.
MPI-INF contribution to the "Pearls of Science" event in the Harnack House
Professor Christian Theobalt, Dept. 4, was invited to a closed event of Max Planck Society and Fraunhofer Society in the Harnack House in Berlin. The executive committees of Max Planck Society and Fraunhofer Society invited top political leaders from the federal government to discuss leading edge research on its way to application. On Jan 10, ten scientists from Max Planck and Fraunhofer Institutes presented their latest research results to chancellor Angela Merkel, secretary for education and research Johanna Wanka, and science state secretary Rainer Sontowski. Christian Theobalt had the opportunity to represent the MPI for Informatics with results from his research group.
The responses were apperently very encouraging. Chancellor Merkel praised the comprehensible, yet compact presentations; she promised to support reliable financial conditions for German basic research in the future.
D4 featured in Max Planck Society's Research Magazine
The current German edition of the quarterly research magazine of the Max Planck Society, Max Planck Forschung, features the work of Christian Theobalt and his group. In the current issue 2.2016, an article titled Computer schneiden Grimassen(Computers Pulling Faces) decribes their research project Puppeteering Faces. The article (in German) can be downloaded here.
D4: ERC Starting Grant for Jürgen Steimle
Jürgen Steimle, also Cluster of Excellence MMCI, won an ERC Starting Grant. His proposal "InteractiveSkin: Digital Fabrication of Personalized On-Body User Interfaces" was accepted by the ERC. The project will be funded for 5 years with a total sum of 1.5 million Euros.
Hans-Peter Seidel receives Solid Modeling Pioneer Award
During the Symposium on Solid and Physical Modeling in Berlin the Solid Modeling Association has awarded Hans-Peter Seidel with the title of Solid Modeling Pioneer.
Interview with Thomas Lengauer on the rise of Computational Biology
Prof. Walter Tichy from Karlsruhe Institute for Technology has conducted a detailed interview with Thomas Lengauer on the rise of Computational Biology which has been published on ACMs Ubiquity site at http://ubiquity.acm.org/
One can download the whole interview as a pdf here.
D5: Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award for Gerhard Weikum
Gerhard Weikum will receive the 2016 SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award, the most prestigious award from the SIGMOD. He is the second German computer scientist bestowed with this award.
Congratulations!
ERC Advanced Grant for Holger Hermanns
Holger Hermanns, professor for computer science at Saarland University, was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council [Link]. This grant donates 2.4 million Euros to his research project on embedded systems "Power to the People".
ERC Grants are the highest level of European research support. They provide substantial support money as well as significant prestige for the grant holders who are chosen in a rigorous selection process. This funding instrument is meant to support topics of Frontier Research, that is high-risk science at the edge of current understanding.
"Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment" in the media
The project "Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment" from the Graphics, Vision & Video group headed by Christian Theobalt has seen wide coverage in media. Some of the links to web-based media are listed on the project page.
The official video was currently viewed almost 2 million times on youtube. The group will present this work during CVPR 2016.
D1: Awards, Scholarships, Appointment and a Promotion
Andreas Wiese received a Emmy-Noether award from the German Research Foundation
(DFG). The award comes with more than 900,000 € financial support.
Sandy Heydrich received a Google PhD Scholarship.
Kurt Mehlhorn was elected to the US Academy of Science and was also appointed to the Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC).
Parinya Chalermook and Eric-Jan van Leeuwen were promoted to Senior Researcher.
New scientific director at the MPI-SWS
Joel Ouaknine, presently a Professor at the University of Oxford, will join the MPI-SWS faculty as a director effective Aug 1, 2016.
"We're extremely pleased to have such an accomplished colleague join our ranks!" says Peter Druschel, founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems.
Lise Meitner Award: Winners 2016
Four young female scientists were awarded with the Lise Meitner Award for 2016.
They will spend the next two years at the MPI for Informatics.
