scienceofintelligence.de

Katrin Frisch (Ombuds Committee for Research Integrity in Germany), "Maintaining Integrity when Using AI in Your Research"
2025-09-17 10:00 - 11:00 (Europe/Berlin) | TU-Campus EUREF, EUREF-Campus 9, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg. EUREF-Campus 10829 Germany
Abstract: Since the release of ChatGPT and other generative AI applications, research institutions as well as various stakeholders such as research funders and publishers have been discussing how the use of AI in research should be dealt with from the perspective of research integrity. While a consensus on some matters was quickly reached, other issues are still being debated. This has led to a rather heterogeneous policy landscape, which will likely remain in flux due to the fast-paced nature of AI. Additionally, a recent survey by Wiley found that nearly two-thirds of respondents indicated that the lack of clear guidelines prevents them from using generative AI to the extent that they would like.
In this presentation, participants will get an overview of the status quo of the current debate on AI and research integrity. The presentation has a practical bend covering how to disclose different use cases of AI in publications and what to keep in mind when it comes to working with AI in research, for example regarding peer review, writing grants or using AI-generated images. The presentation will also raise awareness about further issues that are still under debate such as recommendations on which tools to use, questions of access and ethical aspects.
The talk is part of the 2025 Berlin Summer School on Artificial Intelligence and Society, jointly organized by the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD), the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, and Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), will focus on a timely and critical topic: “Open Science and AI – Shaping the Future of Responsible Research.”
Taking place from 15 to 18 September 2025, this year’s Summer School invites early-career researchers and advanced Master’s students to explore how open data, open collaboration, and responsible practices can help build more transparent, fair, and trustworthy AI systems.
Image created with DALL-E by Maria Ott.

Sören Auer (TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library), "Neuro-symbolic AI for Open Science"
2025-09-17 13:30 - 14:30 | TU-Campus EUREF, EUREF-Campus 9, 10829 Berlin-Schöneberg. EUREF-Campus 10829 Germany
Abstract: We explore how neuro-symbolic AI, i.e., combining neural networks with symbolic knowledge representation, can drive the next generation of open, transparent, and responsible scientific research. By combining the adaptability of machine learning with the interpretability of structured knowledge, neuro-symbolic approaches offer powerful tools for enhancing reproducibility, semantic interoperability, and trust in AI-driven science. With examples such as the Open Research Knowledge Graph and TIB’s AI research assistant, we highlight how these methods support machine-readable research outputs, facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration, and align with the core values of open science, ultimately shaping a more inclusive and accountable research ecosystem.
The talk is part of the 2025 Berlin Summer School on Artificial Intelligence and Society, jointly organized by the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD), the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, and Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), will focus on a timely and critical topic: “Open Science and AI – Shaping the Future of Responsible Research.”
Taking place from 15 to 18 September 2025, this year’s Summer School invites early-career researchers and advanced Master’s students to explore how open data, open collaboration, and responsible practices can help build more transparent, fair, and trustworthy AI systems.

Image created with DALL-E by Maria Ott.

Simon Vock (Charité Universitätsmedizin), "Critical dynamics governs deep learning"
2025-09-25 10:00 - 23:00 | Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
Artificial intelligence has advanced rapidly through larger and deeper neural networks, yet fundamental questions remain about how to optimize network dynamics for performance and adaptability. This study shows that deep neural networks (DNNs), like biological brains, perform optimally when operating near a critical phase transition – poised between active and inactive dynamics. Drawing from physics and neuroscience, we demonstrate that criticality provides a unifying principle linking structure, dynamics, and function in DNNs. Analyzing more than 80 state-of-the-art models, we first report that improvements in accuracy over the past decade coincided with an implicit evolution toward more critical dynamics. Architectural and training innovations unknowingly guided networks toward this optimal regime. Second, building on these insights, we develop a training method that explicitly drives networks to criticality, improving robustness and performance. Third, we show that fundamental problems in AI, including loss of performance in deep continual learning, are caused by loss of criticality and that maintaining criticality rescues performance. This work introduces criticality as a fundamental framework for AI development by emphasizing dynamic optimization alongside scale. It bridges artificial intelligence with physics and biological cortical network function inspiring novel self-tuning strategies in DNNs. The findings offer a theoretically grounded path forward in designing efficient, adaptable, and high-performing artificial intelligence systems drawing inspiration from principles observed in biological neural systems.
Image generated with DALLE by Maria Ott.

Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin (MPI-AB & the University of Konstanz), "Communication and coordination in animal societies"
2025-09-25 16:00 - 17:30 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
Abstract:
Many social species use signals such as vocalizations to coordinate a range of group behaviors, from coming to consensus on where to move to banding together against threats. Despite their widespread importance, these behaviors remain challenging to study in the wild because doing so requires monitoring many individuals simultaneously. In this talk, I will give an overview of our work tracking the movements and vocalizations of entire social groups in the wild to tackle questions at the interface of communication and collective behavior. What roles does vocal signaling play in the coordination of collective movement? What drives groups to split up? And how do vocalizations mediate collective action against external threats? I will explore how we and our collaborators are addressing these questions in three species of social carnivore that coordinate across varying spatial scales – highly cohesive meerkat groups, moderately cohesive coati groups, and fission-fusion hyena clans.
This talk is part of David Mezey‘s course “Introduction to Modeling Collective Behavior, ” a seminar on collective behavior research, combined with multiple interactive elements.
Photo by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė on Unsplash.

Excellent Pub Quiz
2025-10-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Fahimi bar, Skalitzer Str. 133, Berlin, 10999, 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 of one of the clusters of excellence with a related live performance, followed by questions from the areas of the rest of the clusters. At the end of the evening, you will be certainly smarter than before and perhpas with great prizes in your hands.
Event langage: German
Admission: Free entry
Capacity: Limited spaces, so come early to not miss your spot
Moderator: Jochen Müller

Schedule
6:00–7:00 PM: On-site registration
7:00–8:00 PM: Round 1
8:00–8:30 PM: Break
8:30–9:30 PM: Round 2

This event is organized by the Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS.
The other participating clusters are: MATH+, Science of Intelligence, Temporal Communities, UniSysCat, Matters of Activity, and NeuroCure.

Anna Lange and Helene Ackermann (Science of Intelligence), “Adaptivity in Learner-Teacher Interaction”
2025-10-16 10:00 - 11:00 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
More details to follow.

Félicie Dhellemmes and Valerii Chirkov (Science of Intelligence), "Navigating the Explore-Exploit Trade Off in Collective Search"
2025-10-23 10:00 - 11:00 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
More details to follow.

Photo by Prince Patel on Unsplash.

Dimitri Coelho Mollo (Umeå University), "Functional Ontologies for AI systems: Tasks, Mechanisms, and Capacities"
2025-10-30 10:00 - 11:00 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
Abstract
The size and complexity of current Deep Artificial Neural Networks pose remarkable challenges to our attempts of explaining and understanding their workings. In this talk, I put forward a proposal for complementing existing efforts to that aim, inspired by research on cognitive ontology in philosophy of cognitive science. In particular, I suggest that, as much as we need theoretically and empirically grounded categories for cognitive tasks, cognitive capacities, and cognitive mechanisms in cognitive science, we need theoretically and empirically grounded categories for functional tasks, capacities and mechanisms when studying AI systems. The resulting functional ontologies, I argue, can play crucial roles in informing further research in explainable and interpretable AI, and in refining our understanding of such systems. I illustrate this proposal by examining recent research on the computational mechanisms underlying specific capacities in Large Language Models, showing how appeal to functional ontologies can further enrich such research.

Oliver Brock (Science of Intelligence), "Robotics and AI Will Never Feel the Same Again"
2025-10-30 14:15 - 15:45 | Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
The Robotics Institute Germany (RIG) offers weekly insights into current research work on robotics. In RIG’s weekly online lectures, leading robotics researchers present the latest developments, challenges, and visions and answer questions from the audience.
SCIoI spokesperson Oliver Brock will kick off the series with a talk about the future of robotics and AI. He will be available for questions after the lecture.
The event will take place in person and online: https://tu-berlin.zoom-x.de/j/63606623807?pwd=[REDACTED]
The series is part of a seminar for MSc and PhD students, while it is also open to anyone interested. Students who are interested in enrolling in the course can visit the TU-website.

Palina Bartashevich, Marten Kaas, Valerii Chirkov, Yunus Sevinchan, and Yating Zheng (Science of Intelligence), "What is Collective Intelligence?"
2025-11-06 10:30 - 12:00 | MAR Asimov Lab, Marchstrasse 23, Berlin, 10587, Germany
Abstract:
From ice fishers and marlins to robots, natural and artificial collectives show remarkable ways of making decisions together. Join us as we explore the collective mind! How do sardines escape the attacks of marlins – and how do marlins adapt their hunting strategies in return? What guides groups of hobby ice fishers in Finland as they decide where to drill the best fishing holes? And what can these real-world strategies teach us about building smarter artificial agents, like swarm robots?
In this exciting event, SCIoI computer scientist Palina Bartashevich will introduce the topic of collective intelligence, sharing drone footage and stories from her team’s expedition to the Mexican Atlantic, where they observed hunting marlins in action. Following her introduction, ethicist Marten Kaas will lead a lively discussion with scientists Valerii Chirkov, Yunus Sevinchan, and Yating Zheng on the most fascinating aspects of swarm intelligence in humans, animals and robots. It turns out that when groups share information and make decisions together, they can act much like a distributed brain, and that tells us a lot about collective minds in nature and technology — who would have thought?
Register by 5 November by emailing solveig.steinhardt@scioi.de.
Click here for more info.

The Science Slam
2025-11-06 19:00 - 22:00 | Roadrunner’s Paradise Saarbrücker Str. 24 10405 Berlin Germany
Amidst the excitement, one event stands out for its humor, heart, and energy: the Battle of the Brains: The Ultimate Science Slam Edition. This much-loved tradition, hosted by Berlin’s seven Clusters of Excellence (SCIoI, MATH+, UniSysCat, SCRIPTS, Neurocure, Temporal Communities, Matters of Activity) transforms complex research into lively and entertaining performances. Researchers bring their work to life with everything from costumes and props to experimental setups, vying for the audience’s applause and the coveted title of best science slammer. For Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), our member Anna Lange and Vito Mengers will join the stage and present their research.

Excellent Pub Quiz
2025-11-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Fahimi bar, Skalitzer Str. 133, Berlin, 10999, 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 of one of the clusters of excellence with a related live performance, followed by questions from the areas of the rest of the clusters. At the end of the evening, you will be certainly smarter than before and perhpas with great prizes in your hands.
Event langage: German
Admission: Free entry
Capacity: Limited spaces, so come early to not miss your spot
Moderator: Jochen Müller
This event is organized by the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence.
The other participating clusters are: MATH+, UniSysCat, Temporal Communities, SCRIPTS, Matters of Activity, and NeuroCure.

Elena Merdjanovska (Science of Intelligence), “Efficient Model Learning From Data With Partially Incorrect Labels: Learning From Noisy Labels”
2025-11-20 10:00 - 11:00 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
More details to follow.

Image created with DALL-E by Maria Ott.

Sole Traverso (Science of Intelligence)
2025-11-27 10:00 - 11:00 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057

Benjamin Alt (Universität Bremen), "Hybrid AI for Safe Embodied Intelligence"
2025-11-28 10:00 - 23:00 | Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
Enabling robots to perform complex manipulation tasks in open-world environments requires approaches to intelligence that bridge the traditional divide between symbolic and subsymbolic systems. Hybrid systems that combine reasoning over symbolic knowledge with probabilistically approximately correct inference over probability distributions promise to make robot manipulation actions generalizable, interpretable, and scalable to address real-world challenges. This talk explores how hybrid AI systems can enable robots to become not just capable agents, but also safe colleagues and companions for humans.
Benjamin Alt is Technical Director at the AICOR Lab at University of Bremen. He is collaborating with RBO in the Robotics Institute Germany (RIG) Technical Committee (TC) called Manipulate Anything, Anywhere, Anytime (MA3).
This talk is a collaboration between the Robotics and Biology Laboratory (RBO), the Robotics Institute Germany (RIG) and Science of Intelligence.

Arianna Novati (Science of Intelligence), "Mouse Lock Box 2.0"
2025-12-04 10:00 - 10:30 | SCIoI, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
More details to follow.
©SCIoI/Katharina Hohlbaum, Arianna Novati

Vladislav Golyanik (MPI for Informatics), "Egocentric 4D Vision with Conventional and Event Cameras"
2026-01-20 10:00 - 23:00 | Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin, Room 2.057
4D computer vision using egocentric visual sensors on head-mounted devices (such as Aria glasses) is gaining momentum. While substantial progress has been made in recent years, various open challenges remain in the field, including robust 3D human and hand pose estimation from egocentric cameras, optimal egocentric camera placement, real-time processing, and fulfilling ergonomic and power consumption constraints of mobile devices. This talk will focus on several projects on egocentric 4D vision conducted by and with contributions from the 4D and Quantum Vision (4DQV) research group (MPI for Informatics). We will investigate how modern computer graphics rendering tools can be leveraged for synthetic training data generation, and discuss, among other points, the increasing role of event cameras in egocentric vision. The talk will also provide an overview of other ongoing research directions at 4DQV.
Bio:
Vladislav Golyanik is a senior researcher leading the “4D and Quantum Vision” research group at the Visual Computing and Artificial Intelligence (VCAI) Department of MPI for Informatics. He is also a lecturer at Saarland University. Vladislav’s primary research interests include 3D reconstruction and neural rendering of deformable scenes, 4D generative models and quantum-enhanced computer vision (QeCV). He received a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of Kaiserslautern in 2019.
