For the Public

Excellent Pub Quiz

Fahimi bar Skalitzer Str. 133, Berlin, Germany

Dive into the wonderful world of research of the seven Berlin Clusters of Excellence: from literature to chemistry, from politics to AI, you and your team can find answers for exciting and surprising questions from the clusters’ research areas. So seek fellows and think of your team name! Every quiz evening focuses on the research

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Jens Krause (Science of Intelligence), “The Adaptive Value of Collective Behavior”

In this talk Jens Krause will discuss the adaptive value of collective behaviour from different perspectives. One perspective is the potential ability of groups or collectives to make better and even faster decisions. In this context Jens will show some of the modelling approaches to explain collective intelligence and the empirical support for them in

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Martina Poletti (University of Rochester), “Active Foveal Vision” and Michele Rucci (University of Rochester), “Active Space-Time Encoding: The Inseparable Link Between Vision and Action”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

Martina Poletti's talk will focus on active foveal vision. Vision is an active process even at its finest scale in the 1-deg foveola, the visual system is primarily sensitive to changes in the visual input and it has been shown that fixational eye movements reformat the spatiotemporal flow to the retina in a way that

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Tony Prescott (University of Sheffield), “The Psychology of Artificial Intelligence”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

Artificial intelligence and robotics have been making great progress in recent years but how close are we to emulating human intelligence?  This talk will explore the similarities and differences between humans and AIs and discuss the development of biomimetic cognitive systems that more directly think and behave like us.  A key focus will be on

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Andrew J. King (Swansea University),”Understanding Animal Collective Behaviour Across Systems”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

Andrew King is a scientist driven by curiosity, exploring questions across species, contexts, and methods. His research group investigates how and why individuals engage in collective behaviour, using a wide range of systems, perspectives, and tools. In this seminar, he will present their fundamental work in behavioural biology, as well as its applied themes, including

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Jennifer Groh (Duke University) and Kristen Grauman (University of Texas), “What Eye Movements Have to Do with Hearing”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

Jennifer Groh (Duke University) Hearing works in concert with vision, such as when we watch someone’s lips move to help us understand what they are saying.  But bridging between these two senses poses computational challenges for the brain.  One such challenge involves movements of the eyes – every time the eyes move with respect to the head,

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Fumiya lida (University of Cambridge) “Info-Bodiment: Informatization of Robot Embodiment for the Next Generation AI Robots”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

There is growing interest in applying AI technologies to the control of intelligent robotic systems. While this research has led to promising developments, it still faces major challenges due to its heavy reliance on learning from limited datasets—often dominated by visual information. In this talk, I will introduce "Info-Embodiment" as a new research framework for

Hot Topics in Intelligence Research

Heiko Hamann (Science of Intelligence), “From Models to Machines: A Roboticist’s View on Collective Behavior”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

Swarm robotics investigates how large numbers of relatively simple, autonomous robots can coordinate to complete complex collective tasks. In this lecture, we explore how models of collective behavior can guide the design of such systems. We highlight how modeling collective behavior is not only a tool for understanding natural systems, but a powerful method to

Symposium – Plants As Model Systems for Distributed Intelligence?

MAR 2.057

The SCIoI Symposium  - Plants as Model Systems for Distributed Intelligence investigates plant systems as potential model organisms for distributed intelligence. Plants respond adaptively and context-sensitively to environmental stimuli without a central nervous system—an exemplary case of non-neuronal, decentralized intelligence. Rainer Hedrich (University of Würzburg) will present current insights into molecular information processing in plants.

Distinguished Speaker Series

John Tsotsos (York University), “Attentional Mechanisms Bridge Seeing to Looking”

SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

David Marr wrote 'What does it mean, to see? The plain man's answer (and Aristotle's, too) would be, to know what is where by looking'. Modern vision science has moved beyond Aristotle's view as well as Marr's, although it certainly would not have advanced without the influence of both. Seeing and Looking are different and