scienceofintelligence.de

Earlybird UNI-X
2022-04-07 10:00 - 11:00 (Europe/Berlin) | On Zoom
Meet Philipp Semmer and Frederic du Bois-Reymond, both partners at the venture capital firm Earlybird UNI-X. They will talk about funding for university spin-offs and why they believe that scientist and researcher should be more excited about entrepreneurship. They will also share their insights on deep tech companies becoming the next generation of unicorns.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

C. jessica E. Metcalf, “Evolving Immunity: Responding, Learning, Forgetting “
2022-04-21 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract:
The adaptive immune system must meet the challenge of a constantly changing pool of both dangerous and friendly microbes. Evolution has favored a system that can learn what responses work, and forget responses that are unlikely to be needed again, and can seem both remarkably intelligent and remarkably stupid. I will introduce the concepts evolutionary biologists might use to frame thinking about the evolution of immunity, considering the pace of change in the environment, and patterns of exposure over age

Oliver Brock (Science of Intelligence)
2022-04-21 16:00 - 17:30
More details to follow

Danny Driess, Manuel Baum, Katharina Hohlbaum, Niek Andresen (Science of Intelligence), “Perspectives on the Gap Between Robotic Models and Observed Biological Behavior”
2022-04-28 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract:

One of SCIoI’s goals is to establish and evaluate synthetic models for biological data. Achieving this goal is clearly beneficial not only to produce more capable artificial behavior, but also to get a better idea about the processes that may underlie biological intelligence. Why can a cockatoo or mouse open a lock box? What information do we need to provide an artificial agent to perform this task? While this goal is attractive in theory, different projects in SCIoI face diverse practical problems on their way to fulfill this vision. In this joint talk we (Katharina Hohlbaum, Niek Andresen, Danny Driess, and Manuel Baum) will discuss this topic from the perspectives of our individual projects. We aim not only to report on the challenges we face, but would also like to discuss ideas to address these challenges with you.

Girls' Day 2022
2022-04-28 10:00 - 13:00
On Girls’ Day 2022 (28 April 22), SCIoI members Jinan Allan and Marah Halawa will give an overview of their life as women in science, including ambitions and possible challenges. The brief introduction will be followed by visits to the cluster’s labs.
More information here.

Benjamin Lang at "An excellent Science Slam" (in German)
2022-04-30 15:00 - 17:00
Prepare for an extraordinary Science Slam! Young scientists from four Clusters of Excellence of the Berlin University Alliance present their research work in the learning lab Mall Anders in the Wilma Shoppen mall. They only have 15 minutes to present, and everything is allowed: costumes, props, movies, PowerPoint presentations or experimental setups. After the presentations, the audience can meet the slammers and have a few drinks with them.
Among the speakers, SCIoI’s Benjamin Lang will talk about intelligence, its definition and challenges.

Rebecca Lazarides (Science of Intelligence), “From Understanding Learners’ Adaptive Motivation and Emotion to Designing Social Learning Companions”
2022-05-05 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
Abstract:
High motivation and positive emotions are important prerequisites for effective knowledge transfer, while negative emotions can impede the acquisition of new knowledge. This talk presents our current state of research in SCIoI’s project 06 that aims at identifying adaptive teaching strategies of humans, and to synthesize them with the goal to test whether these strategies can be applied successfully by synthetic agents. To this end, we conduct 3 experiments in which (a) we aim to build a model of adaptive teaching using an emotionally-and performance adaptive intelligent tutoring system (ITS) and to compare it to a cognitively-adaptive ITS in its effects on human emotional experience and learning performance; (b) we integrate the model of the emotionally-adaptive ITS in embodied agents (physical robots: Pepper and Cozmo) and compare its effectiveness in knowledge transfer to the traditional ‘on-screen’ form by examining humans’ learning outcomes across conditions; c) we test the adaptive mechanism in the social interaction of two robotic agents – a learner robot (Nao) and a tutor robot (Pepper) – in a scaffolding situation were both are equipped with simple emotional expression / recognition mechanisms. The talks provides an overview about our recent results, their implications and perspectives for future research.

Ralf Kurvers at “Meet the Scientist”, Humboldt Forum
2022-05-05 16:00 - 17:00
“Should I listen to you – or not?”
Should I listen to you? Or should I ignore you when making up my mind? And what factors shape my decision-making? Questions like these are the field of behavioral researchers from the Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence”. Here, psychologists, computer scientists, biologists, neuroscientists, educational scientists, philosophers, and physicists work together to find out more about collective intelligence and human rationality.

One of these researchers is Ralf Kurvers. He has developed an interactive survey for the exhibition “After Nature” that aims at finding out more about decision-making processes in social environments – particularly, the value of “social information”. Questions he is trying to answer are, for instance: Do younger individuals use more social information than older generations? Are there differences across cultures in their use of social information? And is it, in general, good or bad to use social information?
In the series “Meet the Scientist”, Ralf Kurvers presents data collected in the Humboldt Lab over the last six months. He will give insights into his findings and the fascinating field of collective psychology.
Register here! https://www.museumsportal-berlin.de/en/events/soll-ich-auf-dich-hoeren-oder-nicht-neue-for[…]-zur-kollektiven-entscheidungsfindung-mit-ralf-kurvers/

Michael Pauen (Science of Intelligence), "Detecting Higher Cognitive States in Natural and Artificial Intelligence"
2022-05-05 16:00 - 17:30
More details to follow.

Tilman Geishauer, "Virtual Reality - From Research to Market"
2022-05-19 10:00 - 11:00 | SCIoI, MAR Building, Marchstr. 23, Berlin
Abstract: Tilman Geishauser is currently working at Somareality to create a virtual reality focused product out of a cognitive load algorithm based on pupillometry that has been in development for 8 years at Research Studios Austria. In the past he invented one of Germanys most promising VR tools: Halocline Layout. He lead his team at what is now Halocline up until product launch. In his presentations he will talk about making products for virtual reality and about making products in cooperation with research institutions and universities.

Karoline Wiesner (University of Potsdam) “Information Entropy in Complex Systems”
2022-05-19 16:00 - 17:30
Lecture by Prof. Karoline Wiesner, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Potsdam

Abstract:
I begin with an introduction to the nature of complex systems. From a foundational perspective, I will present a systematic description of their features. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the role of information theory in the analysis of complex systems. In particular, we distinguish between information processing — in the sense of encoding and transmitting a symbolic representation — and the formation of correlations (pattern formation / self-organisation). I will give our perspective on why information theory is a prevalent tool in the study of complex systems. If time permits, I will give an outlook on current, unpublished work in this area.

karowiesner.org
This talk will take place in person.

SCIoI+MoA CollActive Materials Event, “Woraus Ist Deine Zukunft Gemacht?”: IdeenLabor, Kombucha Workshop, and Family Activities!
2022-05-20 14:00 - 2022-05-21 18:00 | Mall Anders, Wilma Arkaden, Wilmersdorfer Str. 46, Berlin, 10627, Germany
What do sensitive robots, gripping plants and creative bacteria have in common? Let’s find out together! In “CollActive Materials” experimental laboratory, a joint project of SCIoI and MoA, research and society come together to explore the materials of the future: Can they be more active or more intelligent than the materials of today? Come by to discover surprisingly living materials, and tell us your ideas and wishes for the future.

Register now, and bring the kids too! The event is in German.
PRESS RELEASE:

Lebendige Materialien entdecken
Pop-Up Materiallabor „Woraus ist deine Zukunft gemacht?“ im Mall Anders Lernlabor in der WILMA Shoppen
Am 20. und 21. Mai 2022 lädt das Experimentallabor für Wissenschaftskommunikation „CollActive Materials“ in das Mall Anders Lernlabor in der WILMA Shoppen ein. Rund um die Frage „Woraus ist deine Zukunft gemacht?“ können Erwachsene und Kinder in Workshops, Experimenten und Gesprächsrunden ungeahnt lebendige Materialien entdecken. Ganz zentral dabei: Welche dieser lebendigen Materialien helfen uns dabei, eine nachhaltigere Zukunft zu bauen? Das Pop-Up Materiallabor markiert den Startschuss für CollActive Materials, das als gemeinsames Projekt der Berliner Exzellenzcluster „Matters of Activity“ und „Science of Intelligence“ einen Dialog zwischen Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit zu dieser dringlichen Frage initiieren möchte.
Was haben einfühlsame Roboter, zupackende Pflanzen und kreative Bakterien gemeinsam? Als lebendige Materialien und Objekte könnten sie Zukunft ganz anders werden lassen, als sie sich heute viele vorstellen. Statt aus starren und passiven Materialien wie Stahl und Beton könnten nachhaltige Zukünfte aus aktiven und intelligenten Materialien gemacht sein: Materialien, die reagieren, die wachsen, sich verändern – Materialien mit Eigensinn.
In den Berliner Forschungsclustern „Matters of Activity“ und „Science of Intelligence“ sind aktive und intelligente Materialien und deren Beiträge zu einer nachhaltigeren Zukunft bereits zentrale Themen. Wissenschaftler*innen der beiden Verbünde erforschen beispielsweise, was Menschen von der Architektur von bakteriellen Filmen lernen können, wie ein Schwarm aus Mini-Robotern in Zukunft gemeinsam Entscheidungen treffen könnte oder wie Baumrinden in Zukunft als flexibles Bau-Material genutzt werden könnten.
Doch Wissen, Wünsche und Ideen rund um neuartige Materialien gibt es nicht nur in der Wissenschaft, sondern auch – in vielen verschiedenen Formen – in der Gesellschaft. Um miteinander Wissen und Ideen zu teilen und lebendige Materialien gemeinsam zu erkunden, startet nun das Experimentallabor „CollActive Materials“. In dem dreijährigen Projekt von „Matters of Activity“ und „Science of Intelligence“ sollen Menschen aus Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft gemeinsam über die Materialien von morgen spekulieren und neue Zukunftsvisionen rund um lebendige Materialien schaffen.
Den Beginn dieser neuen Form des „Wissens durch Machen“ macht das Projekt mit dem Pop-Up-Materiallabor in der Mall Anders. An diesem Ort, mitten in der Öffentlichkeit, lädt das Projekt zum gemeinsamen Lernen, Ausprobieren und Entdecken, zum Besprechen und Verhandeln von lebendigen Materialien ein. In einem Kombucha-Workshop, Gesprächsrunden und einem Kinderlabor wird gemeinsam getestet: Wie könnten sie denn aussehen, die Zukünfte der lebendigen Materialien?
Kontakt
Dr. Kristin Werner, Koordinatorin CollActive Materials
Kristin.werner@hu-berlin.de
0176/32445222

Florian Blume, Martin Maier, Doris Pischedda, Olga Wudarczyk-Markett and Murat Kirtay (Science of Intelligence)
2022-06-02 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract:
Social interaction and communication are supported by the integration of multimodal signals. One crucial social cue when interacting with other humans are facial expressions. In Project 8, we study how people not only read information from faces, but how they read meaning into faces based on context and prior knowledge. Incorporating sources of information in addition to what is actually visible (top-down processing) supports efficient, robust, context-adaptive visual perception. Neural networks designed to recognize facial expressions largely ignore such contextual information and are therefore inherently misaligned with human social perception. Closing this gap promises to make synthetic face processing at the same time more intelligent, useful for human-machine interaction, and ethically responsible.
Successful social interaction relies on additional social factors and cognitive processes including partner co-representation (i.e., the representation of the partner’s actions alongside one’s own actions), emotion processing, theory of mind (i.e., the ability to consider mental states – such as beliefs, desires, intentions – to predict people’s behaviour) and trust. In project 9, we study processes underlying social communication in humans and assess potential changes in these processes when the interaction partner is an artificial agent. We use this knowledge to implement similar mechanisms in our robots and assess how this affects their performance along other dimensions, such as trust or scaffolding. Our ultimate goal is to create robots with higher social intelligence that can interact smoothly with humans and other agents.

Photo by Yuyeung Lau on Unsplash

Max Wolf, “Fishy Twin Studies and the Origin of Personality Differences”
2022-06-02 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
I will discuss research on a powerful biological model system, the natural clonal fish Amazon molly. Mothers in this female-only species produce genetically identical offspring, allowing us to employ an experimental twin study approach to address some of the most fundamental questions associated with behaviour and the development of behaviour. Do twins separated directly after birth into identical environments develop personality differences? When and how do such differences develop? And how can this unique model system be used to understand the development of intelligent behaviour?
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Dafna Burema; Mattis Jacobs (Science of Intelligence), “Workshop: Discussing Ethically Problematic “Incidents” of AI Systems”
2022-06-09 10:00 - 11:00
(In-person talk at Science of Intelligence)
Workshop: Discussing ethically problematic “incidents” of AI systems
In the Thursday morning talk, we discuss ethically problematic incidents of AI that we selected from the AIAAIC Repository. In total, we discuss four cases.
In a first step, we present a brief overview what occurred in the respective cases, based on media coverage. The audience is then invited to give a briefly assess the case: what went wrong? Which ethical values or principles were involved? How could the incident have been prevented? Who is responsible for what has happened and who could have prevented it?
In a second step, we present how the respective case was assessed in the ethics-related academic literature and compare the assessment of the participants with the expert’s assessment. We conclude by inviting the participants to reflect on their own projects and potential problematic outcomes of their research.

Photo by Ehud Neuhaus on Unsplah

Thursday Morning Talk with Andrea Iannelli (ETHZ), "Learning and Controlling: Robustness, Informativity and Adaptation"
2022-06-16 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract:
The abundance of available data on the one hand, and the increase in systems complexity caused by the need to cope with new challenging tasks on the other, have put research on so-called learning and data-driven methods in the agenda of virtually every engineering field. Control theory is no exception. In fact, some of its traditional fields have close connections with open problems in data science, such as system identification (with regression and classification) and adaptive and stochastic optimal control (with reinforcement learning). The first part of the talk will give an overview of our ongoing work on basic research problems at the intersection between control theory and learning. This will be followed by a more detailed discussion on two projects that investigate the problem of controlling unknown dynamical systems from different perspectives. One blends behavioral system theory, which sees dynamical systems as sets of trajectories, and system identification, concerned with identifying models from data using statistical and information theoretic tools. The other frames it as an optimal control problem and proposes a robust adaptive model predictive control with active learning components to address the tension between exploration and exploitation. A discussion on the current limitations, future extensions, and foreseeable challenges will conclude the talk.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Marianne Maertens (Event Takes Place at MAR at 2pm), “Smart Mechanisms in Visual Perception”
2022-06-16 14:00 - 15:30

Nicolas Roth, Aravind Battaje, Adrian Sieler and Vincent Wall (Science of Intelligence), "Integration Hackathons for Behavior 1"
2022-06-23 10:00 - 11:30
A cornerstone of SCIoI are the three example behaviors that provide the motivation, as well as the demonstration platforms to showcase the amazing research happening within the cluster. In order to get the ball rolling towards interesting example behaviors, we have recently started regular “integration hackathon” meetings. They bring together people from different projects, who identify achievable first integration steps, and just start putting things together.
In this talk, Nico from P1, Aravind from P2, and Adrian and Vincent from P17 will present this process. We will show the Behavior 1 escape room component that we selected for our first integration attempts, explain which different research components come together to create the combined behavior, and share some insights and observations we made along the way. In the end, we hope to encourage everybody in SCIoI to think about integration steps and motivate people to get involved in the exciting, rewarding (and necessary!) integration efforts for the example behaviors.

Berlin4Ukraine, a Networking Event for Exile Researchers
2022-06-30 13:00 - 18:00
Berlin4Ukraine: Meet & Learn. A networking event for exile researchers.
PhD students and researchers from all academic disciplines that had to flee from war, violence and political persecution frequently face similar problems: They want to continue their scientific work but are often unfamiliar with the German research landscape, the academic system as well as the local funding culture. In many cases, they have to rebuild their academic networks.
The Berlin4Ukraine-event aims to present basic information on the structures and key players of the German scientific system, on the major resources available for refugee researchers and scholars at risk in particular, as well as information on the German science funding system in general. In addition, the event provides networking opportunities for researchers from Ukraine and from Berlin. Therefore, the program contains informational talks and breakout sessions that allow networking. In addition, relevant scientific institutions, projects and organizations are present to give information and to answer questions.

For further details and updates: https://www.br50.org/en/br50/news/ukraine-event
Also on this topic: The TU supports Ukrainian students and researchers
Photo: © Susanne Cholodnicki. TU Berlin

Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022: Meet the Swarm Robots
2022-07-02 17:00 - 19:00
Swarms, such as schools of fish, and flocks of birds, have shown a great capability of solving complex problems in nature. Such examples are bees finding the best nest site, or fish escaping from a predator. Here at the Swarm Robotics Lab of SCIoI, we demonstrate how a swarm of robots can solve problems, make accurate decisions, and perform tasks collectively using bio-inspired algorithms.

Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022
2022-07-02 17:00 - 23:00
SCIoI is taking part of the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022 with five unique events! We will have Richard Schweitzer and Nicolas Roth showing and performing experiments on eye movements, Dustin Lehmann presenting robot interaction, plus a demonstration on swarm intelligence with Mohsen Raoufi, and a talk with David Bierbach at the Humboldt Labor. Do not miss this exciting evening, and read below for more information!
Visit the our website page for more info.

Lange Nacht Der Wissenschaften 2022: RBO Event – Cool Things Robots Do
2022-07-02 17:00 - 23:00
The RBO Lab Team gives three exciting demonstrations of recent advances in robotics: acoustic sensing with soft robot fingers, robot hand teleoperation, and moving robotic hand perceiving spatial depths. The RBO Lab Team has given three exciting demonstrations of recent advances in robotics: acoustic sensing with soft robot fingers, robot hand teleoperation, and moving robotic hand perceiving spatial depths.

Lange Nacht Der Wissenschaften 2022: Exploiting Group Knowledge: Collective Learning Behavior in a Group of Robots
2022-07-02 17:00 - 23:00
In this demonstration visitors can experience a group of balancing robots working together to learn difficult motions and moving together like a collective. Visitors can even take control of individual robots to see how the other robots react and adapt their behavior.

Lange Nacht Der Wissenschaften 2022: Saccades – the Fastest Human Movement
2022-07-02 17:00 - 23:00
To perceive the world around us, we constantly make rapid eye movements called saccades. Despite being the fastest and most frequent of all human movements, we remain largely unaware of them. To observe this, just try to detect your own saccades in the mirror. Using high-speed recording and presentation devices, we can make your saccades and their visual consequences visible. Maybe you can even take a slow-motion video of one of your own saccades at home!

Joint “Meet the Scientist” Talk With All of Berlin’s Seven Clusters at Humboldt Labor Exhibition, “Die Soziale Intelligenz Von Tieren”
2022-07-02 21:00 - 21:30
Viele Tiere zeigen erstaunliche kognitive Leistungen. Am Beispiel von Fischen wird Dr. Bierbach einige der beachtlichen Geistesleistungen von Tieren aufzeigen – vom Antizipieren des zukünftigen Verhaltens bekannter Artgenossen über das Kopieren bei der Partnerwahl bis zum Synchronschwimmen im Schwarm.

Pawel Romanczuk, “Modeling of Flocking &Amp; Swarming With Stochastic Agent-Based Models”
2022-07-07 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract: Collective behavior, as exhibited by bird flocks, fish schools or insect swarms, is a fascinating example of self-organized behavior in biology. Mathematical models of flocking were key for the development of our current understanding on how complex complex group-level behaviors may emerge from simple local rules of interaction of close-by individuals. In this lecture I will provide a brief introduction into individual-based modeling of collective behavior from established so-called social force models to novel developments taking into account perceptual & cognitive constraints.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Katharina Scheiter (University of Potsdam), “Multimodal Learning: Underlying Processes and How To Support Them”
2022-07-14 10:00 - 11:30
Abstract:Theories of learning from multimodal sources (e.g., combinations of text and pictures, aka multimedia) posit that in order to effectively learn from multimedia, students need to select information from text and pictures, organize the information in memory, and most importantly, integrate the information into one mental model. In the first part of my presentation, I will focus on what is meant by text-picture integration by discussing results from empirical studies aimed at better understanding its underlying processes. In the second part of my presentation, I will focus on ways to improve text-picture integration in educational settings through enhancing the design of the learning materials as well as nudging students into processing them more effectively. Eye tracking plays a major role in this research both as a research tool but also as an instructional tool to improve multimodal learning.
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

MEET THE SCIENTIST at HU Labor With Martin Rolfs, “Movement in the Eye of the Beholder. How Looking Shapes Visual Perception”
2022-07-14 16:00 - 17:00
Abstract: The eyes are the Marco Polo of the human body — they travel incessantly across the visual world in front of us, curious for interesting or even insightful information. Tracking someone’s eye movements, therefore, provides insights into their perception and cognition — the eyes are indeed a window to the mind.
That eye movements are necessary for perception to occur in the first place was shown in experiments in the second half of the last century, when scientists showed that preventing eye movements (e.g., through paralysis or by stabilizing an image on the retina) leads to the rapid fading of perception within a fraction of a second.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Daniel M. Wolpert (Columbia University), “Contextual Inference Underlies the Learning of Sensorimotor Repertoires”
2022-07-14 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
Humans spend a lifetime learning, storing and refining a repertoire of motor memories. However, it is unknown what principle underlies the way our continuous stream of sensorimotor experience is segmented into separate memories and how we adapt and use this growing repertoire. Here we develop a principled theory of motor learning based on the key insight that memory creation, updating, and expression are all controlled by a single computation – contextual inference. Unlike dominant theories of single-context learning, our repertoire-learning model accounts for key features of motor learning that had no unified explanation and predicts novel phenomena, which we confirm experimentally. These results suggest that contextual inference is the key principle underlying how a diverse set of experiences is reflected in motor behavior.
This event will take place on Zoom.

Photo by afiq fatah on Unsplash

Linda Onnasch (HU), “Effects of Anthropomorphism on Trust and Behavior in Work-Related HRI”
2022-07-21 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
Anthropomorphic robot features are intended to trigger the activation of social scripts from human-human interaction, thereby offering an intuitive approach to interact with robots. Whereas this seems to be a valid design option for the social domain leading to an increased acceptance of robots, trust and willingness to interact, other domains of human-robot interaction (HRI) do not provide such a clear picture. In my talk I will address the impact of anthropomorphic robot design on trust and behavior in work-related settings and show the drawbacks of anthropomorphism when not considering the context of HRI and the task relevance of anthropomorphism.

Ph. taken from HU website.
