Human thinking as a model for Artificial Intelligence

New LOEWE start professorship: Charley Wu strengthens cognitive sciences at TU

2025/01/13

The cognitive scientist Dr Charley Wu has been awarded a LOEWE start professorship at TU Darmstadt. His work focuses on the question of how artificial intelligence (AI) can use human learning strategies to become more flexible, efficient and social. Approximately two million euros of LOEWE funding will be provided for his research over a total of six years. The state is thus also supporting the full proposal of the research networks ‘The Adaptive Mind’ and ‘Resonable AI’ in the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments, in which TU Darmstadt is significantly involved.

Charley Wu

“I am very pleased that we were able to attract Charley Wu to TU Darmstadt with a LOEWE start professorship. In Charley Wu, we are gaining an excellent colleague who, with his interdisciplinary research in the field of computational cognitive sciences, is passionately breaking new and inspiring ground in the connection between the twin disciplines of cognitive science and AI. He is developing forward-looking models to understand human thought and learning,” says TU President Tanja Brühl. “An AI that learns from human cognitive processes is an AI that humans can understand. In Charley Wu, we are gaining a proven expert who will strengthen an excellent international team at TU Darmstadt, at the Centre for Cognitive Science and at hessian.AI. His innovative research will also significantly enrich our two Cluster of Excellence projects TAM and RAI and sustainably stimulate new interdisciplinary collaborations.”

Wu's research combines human and artificial intelligence. He uses machine learning to understand human cognitive processes and, on this basis, to develop AI systems that are more efficient, robust and fair than current variants. His approach can promote learning in educational institutions and addresses key challenges of today's AI: high data and energy requirements, limited adaptability and limited social learning. Wu is researching how humans learn efficiently from little data and use social information to flexibly handle new situations – aspects that would be beneficial for AI development. His goal is a human-centred AI that uses the mechanisms of human cognition and can learn and innovate like humans.

‘Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in our everyday lives and is significantly simplifying many processes. However, there are also major concerns regarding its reliability. It is often not very adaptable and the associated data and energy consumption is immense,’ says Timon Gremmels, Hesse's Minister of Science. ’Dr Wu enriches research on artificial intelligence in Hesse as a whole and strengthens networking, not least between the clusters in the Excellence Competition.’

TU Darmstadt is currently involved in three Clusters of Excellence in the highly competitive Excellence Strategy competition. Wu's appointment to the professorship of Computational Cognitive Science at the Department of Human Sciences will further strengthen the expertise of TU Darmstadt in the two networks ‘The Adaptive Mind’ (TAM) and ‘Reasonable AI’ (RAI). At the same time, his acceptance of the professorship also demonstrates the international reputation of cognitive sciences at TU Darmstadt.

With Professor Loes von Dam, Professor Thomas S. A. Wallis and Humboldt Professor Angela Yu, a number of high-ranking scientists with international backgrounds are already conducting research in this field.

Wu will join the TU in June 2025. The LOEWE funding will start on 1 January 2026. He will be a member of the Centre for Cognitive Science at the TU Darmstadt and the Hessian Centre for Artificial Intelligence, hessian.AI.

LOEWE Professorships at TU Darmstadt

LOEWE Start Professorships are aimed at excellent scientists at an early stage in their careers, who are attracted to or retained in Hesse as a centre of science with funding of up to two million euros for a period of six years. Further funding lines are LOEWE Top Professorships and LOEWE Transfer Professorships. With Charley Wu, the tenth LOEWE professorship is coming to TU Darmstadt. So far, Professor Iryna Gurevych, Professor Marcus Rohrbach, Professor Mira Mezini, Professor Carsten Binnig (all in computer science) and Professor Achim Schwenk (physics) have been awarded LOEWE top professorships. Professor Timo Richarz (Mathematics), Professor Anna Rohrbach (computer science) and Professor Anna C. Bakenecker (Electrical Engineering and Information Technology) hold LOEWE start professorships. One of the first four LOEWE transfer professorships went to Professor Matthias Weigold (Mechanical Engineering).

Personal details

After studying philosophy and cognitive science in Vancouver and Vienna, Dr Charley Wu worked at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and completed his doctorate in psychology at Humboldt University in Berlin. He then conducted research as a postdoc at the renowned Harvard University. From 2020, he led a research group at the University of Tübingen, financed by the Cluster of Excellence ‘Machine Learning for Science’ and the Tübingen AI Centre. In 2024, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant and the Rising Star Award from the American Psychological Society.

Cluster of Excellence projects RAI and TAM

‘The Adaptive Mind’ (TAM) and “Reasonable AI” (RAI) are two of the projects with which TU Darmstadt and its partner universities are currently applying for funding in the Cluster of Excellence line as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments. TU Darmstadt is represented in the Excellence Strategy competition with a total of three project outlines. In addition to ‘TAM’ from the field of cognitive sciences and ‘RAI’ on artificial intelligence, this is CoM2Life on communicating biomaterials.