Four ETH professors receive Max Planck fellowships
ETH and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems are intensifying their partnership to promote doctoral candidates and research: ETH professors Otmar Hilliges, Thomas Hofmann, Andreas Krause and Klaas P. Prüssmann are new Max Planck fellows in Tübingen and Stuttgart.
The Max Planck Society has awarded Max Planck fellowships to four ETH professors: machine learning experts Otmar Hilliges, Thomas Hofmann, Andreas Krause and biomedical engineering expert Klaas P. Prüssmann will each lead one additional research group at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen/Stuttgart and also teach doctoral students.
The cooperation will offer the ETH professors the opportunity to expand their research:
Otmar Hilliges researches new methods for digitally capturing and interpreting human movement. His group has, for example, developed a virtual reality glove that can be used to “feel” virtual objects. As a Max Planck fellow, he will supervise a research group focusing on human-centric vision and learning. The group plans to work on computer-assisted modelling of human positions, forms and appearance, and analyse how humans interact with intelligent systems.
Thomas Hofmann is a leading specialist of deep learning in Europe and the Co-director of the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems. As a Max Planck fellow, he will supervise a group working on research in the field of coordinative intelligence, which treats intelligence as a coordinative and communicative process.
Andreas Krause is one of Europe’s leading researchers of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Krause, who is also Chair of the ETH AI Centre that opened about a year ago, has set out to make artificial intelligence trustworthy and its decisions comprehensible. As a Max Planck fellow, he will supervise a research group focussing on interactive learning.
Klaas P. Prüssmann is a specialist in imaging techniques, in particular magnetic resonance imaging. As a Max Planck fellow, he will work on research in the fields of microrobotics and empirical inference together with Max Planck Directors Metin Sitti and Bernhard Schölkopf.
The computer scientists Sitti and Schölkopf already hold ETH associate professorships, which also include being involved in teaching at ETH. The Max Planck fellowships for the ETH professors in Tübingen and Stuttgart complement the work of Sitti and Schölkopf in Zurich.
Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems
The Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems (CLS) is a cross-border partnership between the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH Zurich. It was started in 2015 and extended in 2020 in order to connect researchers working in the field of artificial intelligence and learning systems and thus promote interdisciplinary basic research. The internationally renowned joint doctoral partnership is the centrepiece of the CLS. It is headed by co-directors Thomas Hofmann (ETH Zurich) and Bernhard Schölkopf (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems).