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May 2025 – The Excellence Strategy is in final sprint. The decision on the funding of the Clusters of Excellence will be made in May 2025; the actual funding of the selected projects will then start on January 1, 2026 for a period of seven years. The preparation of the Hessian excellence applications has benefited greatly from the funding provided by the state of Hesse. Learn more

April 25, 2025 – A huge success for CogSci @ TU Darmstadt: CCS is part of the 10-year research program SCENE (Simons Foundation Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience) investigating how the brain is encoding affordances. Constantin Rothkopf represents TU Darmstadt as the only German institution in the international consortium and will head the “Human Team” within SCENE. The collaboration, which will officially begin July 1, will provide over 8 Mio USD per year across six teams of researchers. Learn more

April 14, 2025 – Congratulations! Mathias Schultheis successfully defended his dissertation “Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Human Decision-Making Under Uncertainty”. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Heinz Koeppl and Prof. Constantin A. Rothkopf, Ph.D. Learn more

April 11, 2025 – CCS took part in the Computer Science Easter Camp, where we engaged 30 fifth- and sixth-grade girls over two afternoons. Through interactive sessions on visual illusions, throwing experiments in virtual reality, and critical discussions on artificial intelligence, we encouraged curiosity and empowered them to think like scientists. Learn more

March 06, 2025 – Congratulations! Dominik Straub successfully defended his dissertation “Inverse normative modeling of continuous perception and action”. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Constantin A. Rothkopf, Ph.D., and Prof. Dr. Joan López-Moliner. Learn more

February 28, 2025 – Congratulations! Lisa Kempf (born Scherf) successfully defended her dissertation “Interactive Machine Learning”. The thesis was supervised by Dr.-Ing. Dorothea Koert, Prof. Iolanda Leite, Ph.D., and Prof. Dr. Georgia Chalvatzaki. Learn more

December 31, 2024 – The BMBF-funded project IKIDA has been successfully completed.

December 13, 2024 – The BMBF-funded project IKIDA has successfully completed its 5th and final milestone meeting under evaluation by the DLR Projektträger (Project Management Agency).

December 9, 2024 – Congratulations! Vildan Salikutluk successfully defended her dissertation “Human Problem-Solving with Interactive Artificial Intelligence”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Frank Jäkel and Prof. Dr. Lewis Chuang. Learn more

November 29, 2024 – Cognitive Science @ TU Darmstadt, supported by the Centre for Cognitive Science, hosted a Mentoring Event on career prospects for cognitive science students. With around 110 attendees in total, the event was a big success. Learn more

July 15, 2024 – WhiteBox is engaged in the science simulation game “Knowledge versus Opinion” at schools in the federal state of Hesse. The simulation game introduces pupils to the importance of science and democracy. Learn more

June 2024 – From 13-14 June 2024 the 4th Movement Academy took place in Bensheim with over 50 participants, which was mainly organized by the DFG RTG LokoAssist. The aim of the Movement Academy is to create a unique learning space for movement experts and people interested in movements, national and international, that come from a variety of backgrounds including arts, sports, medicine, therapy and science. The conference was also supported by the Centre for Cognitive Science and due to the involved topics by the LOEWE research cluster WhiteBox , among others. Learn more

April 26, 2024 – Congratulations! Susanne Trick successfully defended her dissertation “Bayesian Fusion of Probabilistic Forecasts”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Constantin Rothkopf, Ph.D. and Prof. Dr. Dominik Endres. Learn more

April 25, 2024 – The Centre for Cognitive Science welcomed young pupils to its research facilities as part of Girls' Day, aimed at fostering curiosity and interest in cognitive science. The participants engaged in immersive sessions exploring various topics within the field. Learn more

April 18, 2024 – Congratulations! Thea Behrens successfully defended her dissertation “Improving Research Methods for Problem Solving: The Example of Sudoku”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Frank Jäkel and Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Kühnberger. Learn more

April 16, 2024 – IKIDA successfully convened its 4th milestone meeting. With guests from research and industry in attendance, the meeting served as a platform to discuss advancements, challenges, and future prospects. Learn more

April 2024 – WhiteBox supports the awareness event: “Uncovered Biases: The Power of Awareness in Dealing with Unconscious Bias” on 24th of April 2024. (The event is held in German only.) Learn more

February 2, 2024 – Successful next step in the Excellence Strategy. TU Darmstadt has the opportunity to establish three Clusters of Excellence: “Reasonable Artificial Intelligence” (RAI) , “The Adaptive Mind” (TAM) and CoM2Life. Members of the Centre for Cognitive Science are involved in all three initiatives. The principal investigators of the Centre for Cognitive Science are particularly involved in RAI and TAM with main topics along Artificial Intelligence and cognitive science. Learn more

January 26, 2024 – Cognitive Science @ TU Darmstadt, supported by the Centre for Cognitive Science, hosted a Mentoring Event on career prospects for cognitive science students. With around 120 attendees, the event was a big success. Learn more

January 23, 2024 – Congratulations! Florian Kadner successfully defended his dissertation “Active vision as sequential decision-making under uncertainty”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Constantin Rothkopf, Ph.D. and Prof. Mary M. Hayhoe, Ph.D. Learn more

January 2024 – In a publication in the renowned journal “Nature Human Behaviour”, WhiteBox researchers investigate the properties of behavioral economic theories automatically learned by artificial intelligence. The study highlights that cognitive science still cannot be easily automated by artificial intelligence and that a careful combination of theoretical reasoning, machine learning and data analysis is needed to understand and explain why human decisions are the way they are and deviate from the mathematical optimum. Read more (in German)

December 7, 2023– In the ProLOEWE discussion format “Hessen's cutting-edge research in 45 minutes”, WhiteBox discussed with interested members of the Hessian state parliament. The topic was: “AI – more human than expected?”.Read more

July 31, 2023 – The BMBF-funded project PlexPlain has been successfully completed.

July 6, 2023 – IKIDA & CCS participated in The Hessian AICon and presented current projects results.

July 4, 2023 – Hessen schafft Wissen published a new animated video on project WhiteBox.

April 27, 2023 – On Girls' Day, a group of 15 girls paid a visit to the Centre for Cognitive Science. During their time at the Centre’s labs, they were able to see robots in action, had the opportunity to test a number of visual and weight illusion experiments, and enjoyed performing motion experiments using Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Learn more

April 27, 2023 – Susanne Trick was honoured by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Informatics Society (GI) as AI Newcomer of the Year. Congratulations!
Susanne is doing her doctorate at the Centre for Cognitive Science and is currently team member of the BMBF funded research group IKIDA.
Learn more

March 27, 2023 – WhiteBox and the Centre for Cognitive Science hosted the “Symposium on Explainability”. Different facets of explainability were discussed and the results of the WhiteBox project so far were presented. Learn more

March 23, 2023 – DFKI unit in Darmstadt officially opened. Learn more
The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is expanding basic AI research with a laboratory at TU Darmstadt. The focus is on Systemic AI, the combination of different AI building blocks into complex, comprehensive AI systems. Together with guests from business, politics and science, the opening ceremony took place in Darmstadt on 23.03.2023.
CCS members Kristian Kersting and Jan Peters will head two of the three newly established research departments at DFKI:
Systems AI for Decision Support (SAIDE), Prof. Dr. Carsten Binnig
Systems Artificial Intelligence (SAINT), Prof. Dr. Kristian Kersting.
Systems AI for Robot Learning (SAIROL), Prof. Dr. Jan Peters

January 31, 2023 – Thomas Wallis receives the highly prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his project “SEGMENT – 3D scene understanding in two glances” Learn more

December 8, 2022 – The Centre for Cognitive Science hosted the Symposium “Explaining adaptive vision” with an international line-up of speakers and 40+ participants. The Event was funded by the Hessian State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts and supported by “WhiteBox” and “TAM – The Adaptive Mind”. Learn more

December 2022 – Prof. Dr. Angela Yu has started her Humboldt Professorship for “Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience” at the Centre for Cognitive Science. Welcome! Learn more

October 20, 2022 – 6. Darmstädter Start-up & Innovation Day. In the category “Scientists” of the TU ideas competition #DeineIdee2022, Constantin Rothkopf and Florian Kadner convinced with a digital font and won the 1st place. The AdaptiFont interactive font automatically adapts its design to the reader: letter size and shape, screen brightness. Learn more

October 2022 – The ERC funded project “ACTOR – Towards a computational account of natural sequential behavior” is starting! Learn more

September 5, 2022 – CCS goes KogWis 2022. Join Symposium 2: Flexible Representations for Human(-like) Problem Solving!
3:00pm – 4:40pm, Lecture Room 1: KG I, HS 1199 @ Uni Freiburg

July 2022 – What is Cognitive Science about? To shed some light, participants of the GK Doctoral Symposium 2022 wrote blog posts about their research topics with the special focus on science communication with the general public.
The blog is now published under https://www.perspectives-on-learning.de

May 1, 2022 – Launch of the DFG funded Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) LokoAssist. The RTG aims at a “seamless” integration of assistive devices into the human body schema. Partners: TU Darmstadt, University of Heidelberg, Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim. Learn more

April 13, 2022 – Congratulations! Nils Neupärtl successfully defended his dissertation “Interacting with an uncertain physical world: Probabilistic models of human perception and action”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Constantin Rothkopf, Ph.D. and Prof. Dr. Katja Fiehler. Learn more

April 6-8, 2022 – The Technical University Darmstadt and its Centre for Cognitive Science hosted the 2nd GK Doctoral Symposium, from the 6th to the 8th of April, 2022. Overall, we welcomed 37 doctoral students from 14 different institutions across Germany and Austria, presenting their work on topics such as cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence and education. Learn more

March 18, 2022 – Jan Peters receives the first EIC Transition Grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) for his project “Visual Robot Programming” Learn more

March 2022 – Constantin Rothkopf receives the highly prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his project “ACTOR – Towards a computational account of natural sequential behavior” Learn more

January 10, 2022 – The research projects IKIDA and PlexPlain presented and discussed their ongoing work and intermediate results at the BMBF online conference “AI All-Hands-Meeting”.

December 31, 2021 – The BMBF-funded project KoBo34 has been successfully completed.

November 2021 – New Humboldt Professor Angela Yu to join the Centre for Cognitive Science! Angela Yu, head of the Computational & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at University of California San Diego, has received the Humboldt Professorship for Artificial Intelligence and is slated to conduct research at TU Darmstadt in the future. Learn more

October 19, 2021 – The BMBF-funded project KoBo34 presented its project results at the BMBF online conference “BMBF Fachtagung Robotik” (being the final conference of the funding line). Press Release BMBF (in German)

October 11, 2021 – The BMBF-funded project KoBo34 concluded its technical project work with a final milestone meeting at the Forschungszentrum Geriatronik in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

October 1, 2021 – Dr. Dorothea Koert has been appointed leader of the independent BMBF-funded junior research group IKIDA . She has been leading the team since the start of the project in October 2020. Learn more (in German)

October 2021 – Two new introduction videos about project WhiteBox released in collaboration with ProLOEWE – Watch (1) Watch (2) (in German)

August 31, 2021 – The BMBF-funded project DeepSpaceBIM has been successfully completed.

May 12, 2021 – The research project DeepSpaceBIM successfully presented its final results to interested professionals and the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI).

May 2021 – Prof. Loes van Dam, PhD, joined the Centre for Cognitive Science as Professor for “Sensorimotor Control and Learning”. Welcome! Learn more

March 2021 – Thomas Wallis joined the Centre for Cognitive Science as professor for “Perception”. Welcome! Learn more

February 1, 2021 – The Centre for Cognitive Science has been successful in two cluster grant applications, the collaborative clusters “The Adaptive Mind” & “Third Wave of AI” Learn more

December 2020 04.12.2020 – The Centre for Cognitive Science successfully applied for the LOEWE Research Cluster WhiteBox. The cluster will be funded four years with a total grant of 4.7 Mio EUR by the Hessian State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts. WhiteBox is joining the twin disciplines AI and Cognitive Science. Starting 2021, an interdisciplinary team will develop whitebox methods to foster human understanding of artificial intelligence and its results. A fundamental requirement and a focus research area of this undertaking is better understanding of the mechanisms of machine as well as human intelligence. More information will follow soon. TU Darmstadt news (in German)

October 2020 – The BMBF-funded junior research group “IKIDA – Interaktive KI für Domänenexperten und Alltagsnutzer” has started on 01.10.2020. 6 young scientists will investigate interactive AI algorithms & cognitive models for human-AI interaction. Project duration 01.10.2020-30.09.2024 Learn more

October 2020 – The BMBF-funded project “KompAKI – Kompetenzzentrum für Arbeit und Künstliche Intelligenz” (Competence Center for Work and Artificial Intelligence) started on 01.10.2020. It involves 11 research groups from TU Darmstadt and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, 8 companies, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and other associated partners. The Centre for Cognitive Science joins with Kristian Kersting, Frank Jäkel, Constantin Rothkopf. Project duration: 01.10.2020-30.09.2025 Learn more

September 2020 – On 15 September 2020 the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) officially inaugurated its network of 30 research units. One of the research units is based at TU Darmstadt. Its spokesperson is the Computer Science Professor Stefan Roth. All ELLIS unit faculty are core members or associated members of the Cognitive Science Centre. We are excited about the opportunities for collaboration in AI, ML and CogSci! Learn more

August 2020 – on 31 August 2020 the new Hesse Centre for Artificial Intelligence was established. Among the 22 founding professors are 6 members and associated researchers of the Centre for Cognitive Science. Mira Mezini and Kristian Kersting will be the spokespeople of the AI Centre Hesse. Learn more

July 2020 – Jan Peters has been awarded a “Proof of Concept” grant of 150,000 euros by the European Research Council (ERC). He receives the award for his project “AssemblySkills”. The aim of the project is to give robots the ability to learn autonomously with the help of artificial intelligence. Learn more

July 2020 – new article in the popular science magazine 'Spektrum der Wissenschaft' on what AI teaches us about natrual intelligence by Albert Newen, Constantin Rothkopf, Nele Russwinkel and Martin V. Butz

June 2020 – Stefan Roth was awarded the 2020 Longuet-Higgins Prize together with Deqing Sun and Michael J. Black for their work on the “Secrets of optical flow estimation and their principles”. The prize is given annually by the IEEE Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) Technical Committee for “Contributions in Computer Vision that Have Withstood the Test of Time.”

June 2020 – we are giving a talk as part of smartstart's series 'midsummer brains- computational neuroscience from my point of view'

May 28, 2020 – Christian Schumacher successfully defended his PhD thesis “Motor and Sensor Network Topologies as Translators between Motor Control and Human Locomotion”. Congratulations!

May 2020 – we are part of the panel discussion at the virtual Neurizons 2020 conference

May 2020 – invited keynote at the virtual Symposium on Explainable Machine Learning for Biomedical Data Analysis and Care Robotics, Universität Oldenburg, Germany

April 2020 – the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has approved our collaborative grant “PlexPlain – Erklärende KI für Komplexe Lineare Programme am Beispiel intelligenter Energiesysteme” with Kristian Kersting, Frank Jäkel, Constantin Rothkopf and Florian Steinke. Learn more

February 11, 2020 – Dorothea Koert successfully defended her PhD thesis “Interactive Machine Learning for Intelligent Assistive Robots”. Congratulations!

February 2020 – Constantin Rothkopf is teaching at the Minds and Machines Workshop in Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence and Education at the University of Luxembourg

January 2020 – Kristian gave invited talk on Hybrid AI at ACM India Joint International Conference on Data Science & Management of Data (CODS-COMAD) 2020 in Hyderabad, India.

January 1, 2020 – Congratulations! Daniel Johannes Hofmann successfully defended his dissertation “Interareale raumzeitliche Dynamiken und Variabilität der Aktivität neuronaler Populationen im visuellen Kortex der Katze”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ralf A. W. Galuske and PD. Dr. Matthias H. J. Munk. Learn more

December 10, 2019 – Czech Technical University in Prague and Technical University of Darmstadt officially agreed on the possibility of cooperation and student exchange related to cognitive science.

December 2019 – talks by Kristian Kersting on deep probabilistic models at the University of Waterloo and Borealis.AI, Canada.

December 2019 – members of the CCS are now part of a European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) Unit

December 2019 – Stefan Roth receives the highly prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his project „RED – Robust, Explainable Deep Networks in Computer Vision“. Learn more

December 2019 – panel discussion with Constantin Rothkopf as part of the 'AI Science film on tour' shortfilm program, Schader Forum, Darmstadt

December 2019 – start of 'Seminar on Human & Machine Intelligence' coorganized with Nori Jacoby, Kristian Kersting, Stefan Kramer, Visvanathan Ramesh, Gemma Roig at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

November 2019 – Ph.D. students Michael Lutter and Dorothea Koert received the “AI Newcomers” Award of the Year 2019 by the German Society of Computer Science!

November 2019 – best paper runner-up award in MICCAI 2019 workshop OR 2.0 and were finalists of the best presentation award (15 out of 1800+ submitted papers) for showing how AI can be employed for complete surgical planning. We also won an educational award.

November 2019 – invited talk by Constantin Rothkopf at the Tricolore Workshop on creativity, cognition, computation, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy

November 2019 – invited talk by Kristian Kersting on the future of AI at the 50 Years Anniversary Conference of the University of Bielefeld.

November 2019 – Tutorial on the Automatic Statistician at the Deutscher IT-Leiterkongress 2019 by Kristian Kersting

November 2019 – panel discussion at the 8th BMBF workshop on 'Marvel of science or devil’s work? Artificial Intelligence for European security research', Brussels, Belgium with participation of Constantin Rothkopf

November 2019 – the book “Wie Maschinen lernen- Künstliche Intelligenz verständlich erklärt” edited by Kristian Kersting, Christoph Lampert, and Constantin Rothkopf was just published

October 2019: research from the CCS is featured in an ARTE series showcasing some recent developments in AI such as our moral choice machine.

October 2019: TU Darmstadt starts its brandnew Bachelor's and Master's program in Cognitive Science. The Centre for Cognitive Science welcomes the first CogSci students!

October 2019: Frank Jaekel participates as expert in the science-policy workshop in Berlin on the Organization of the Future in the face of modern AI.

September 2019: Kristian Kersting received the German AI Award (Deutscher KI Preis) 2019, accompanied by a prize of EURO 100.000.

September 2019: Constantin Rothkopf gave talks at the Computational Cognitive Science Group, MIT, Boston, USA, the Center for Perceptual Systems, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA and at the department of psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

September 2019: we discussed moral choice machines, preditive policing, and AI at the Bad Homburg conference on “AI: How can we trust algorithms?”

September 2019: we discussed publicly with the Hessen Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts Angela Dorn and Jessica Heesen from the University of Tübingen about AI and ethics.

September 2019: we coorganzied a Dagstuhl Seminar on “Logic and Learning”

August. 2019: Stefan Roth is part of a panel on “AI and Robotics” at the European Forum Alpbach

August 2019: our work on the moral choice machine got featured in the Frankfurter Rundschau.

June 2019: Kristian Kersting elected as Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) for exceptional contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence.

June 2019: Best Paper Award at the ICML 2019 Workshop on Tractable Graphical Models (TPM).

May 2019: The Centre for Cognitive Science participates in the RMU science days and gives insights into modern AI.

May 2019: Six papers from Darmstadt accepted at ICML, the premier international conference on machine learning. Congrats! Actually, the TU Darmstadt is the only University from Germany among the Top 50 contributing academic institutions at ICML 2019.

May 2, 2019 – Congratulations! David Hoppe successfully defended his dissertation “Eye movements in dynamic environments”.
The thesis was supervised by Prof. Constantin A. Rothkopf, PhD and Prof. Máté Lengyel, PhD. Learn more

April 2019: we discuss with high school students the movie Blade Runner and AI as part of the Schulkinowochen in Hesse.

March 2019: we present a keynote on AI at the Spring convent of the Leibniz Association.

March 2019: Three members of the Centre for Cognitive Science named Top 100 Influential Scholar 2018 by AMiner. The 2018 winners are among the most-cited scholars from the top venues of their respective subject fields (such as Artificial Intelligence) in the recent ten years (between 2007 and 2017).

01.10.2018 Launch of the BMVI-funded project DeepSpaceBIM 4.1 (“Der digitale Bauassistent der Zukunft”). It aims at creating a “digital construction assistant” in the form of an experimental development with the overall aim to make the complexity of large-scale construction projects more manageable. Project partners are M.O.S.S. Computer Graphic Systems, Robotic Eyes, DMT, Steinmann Kauer Consulting, Drees & Sommer, and Technical University of Darmstadt. Learn more

03.09-06.09.2018 KogWis 2018, the 14th biannual conference of the German Society for Cognitive Science took place at the Centre for Cognitive Science @ TU Darmstadt under the topic “Computational Approaches to Cognitive Science”. More than 160 participants joined the conference. The scientific program included international keynote speakers, 35 contributed talks and around 60 poster presentations. Learn more

01.07.2018 Launch of the BMBF-funded project KoBo34 („Intuitive Interaktion mit kooperativen Assistenzrobotern für das 3. und 4. Lebensalter”). It aims at improving social participation and maintaining personal independence of elderly people by developing an assistive humanoid robot. The project consortium comprises robotics company Franka Emika, Technical University of Munich, Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences, and Technical University of Darmstadt. Learn more

End of 2017 TU Darmstadt joins the Rhine-Main Neuroscience Network (rmn2)

08.12.2017 Heinz Koeppl receives the highly prestigious Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for his project “CONSYN – Contextualizing biomolecular circuits models for synthetic biology“.

18.10.2017 The Centre for Cognitive Science launches its first series of colloquia on Computational Cognitive Science .

October 2017 Prof. Dr. Frank Jäkel joined the Centre for Cognitive Science as professor for “Models of Higher Cognition”. Welcome!

June 2017 Prof. Dr. Kristian Kersting joined the Centre for Cognitive Science as professor for “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning”. Welcome!

February 2017 The RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (Japan) and the Centre for Cognitive Science / TU Darmstadt sign a Memorandum of Understanding on future cooperation.

28.09-30.09.2016 11th joint Conference on Motor Control & Learning, Biomechanics & Training, Human Movement and Technology. Learn more

15.09.2017 Dr. Dirk Balfanz joined the Centre for Cognitive Science as Scientific Managing Director. Welcome!

13.04-14.04.2016 The Centre for Cognitive Science hosts a 2-day International Workshop on Cognitive Science.
Agenda Day 1: “Perception Day” – Perception & Vision / Spatial Perception / Perception & Machine Learning / Perception & Neural Representation
Agenda Day 2: “Action Day” – Actions & Decision Making / Actions & Motor Learning / Actions, Signals & Machine Learning / Actions & Motor Control

25.02.2016 Founding of the Centre for Cognitive Science @ TU Darmstadt