PI Lecture

Jens Krause (HU Berlin), “Mexican Waves: The Adaptive Value of Collective Behaviour”.

Abstract The collective behaviour of animals has attracted considerable attention in recent years, with many studies exploring how local interactions between individuals can give rise to global group properties. The functional aspects of collective behaviour are less well studied, especially in the field and relatively few studies have investigated the adaptive benefits of collective behaviour

Thursday Morning Talk

David Bierbach (Science of Intelligence), “Anticipation in fish-robot interactions”

Abstract: I will present our current research involving the Robofish. I will put a special focus on our latest research paper that found live fish to be able to anticipate predictably behaving Robofish both in regard to final movement locations as well as movement dynamics. This talk will take place in person at SCIoI  

External Event

Scholar Minds – Mental health conference 2022

A serie of lectures, workshops and a panel discussion about themes related to Mental health in academia, from opinions of under-represented groups, to power abuse, healthy working conditions, and much more. More info here Photo taken from Scholar Mind webiste The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Thursday Morning Talk

POSTPONED: Scott Robbins, “What Machine’s Shouldn’t Do”

From writing essays to evaluating potential hires, machines are doing a lot these days. In all spheres of life, it seems that machines are being delegated more and more decisions. Some of these machines are being delegated decisions that could have significant impact on human lives. Examples of such machines which have caused such impact

External Event

Berlin Science Week 2022 – Panel Discussion with Dafna Burema, Mattis Jacobs, and Jonas Frenkel, “Artificial Intelligence: Examples of AI gone wrong and Ethical Questions”

In this lively debate, our researchers Dafna Burema, Mattis Jacobs and Jonas Frenkel from Science of Intelligence will talk about Artificial Intelligence and its ethical implications including examples of AI gone wrong. How do we imagine sustainable futures with robots? What are the open questions scientists face every day when dealing with Artificial Intelligence? Visit

External Event

Berlin Science Week 2022 – Collective Materials Workshop, “What is the Future Made Of?”

Nature is a great designer. Through billions of years of evolution – of design trial and error (or re-route) – it has come up with uniquely functional and beautiful materials. It uses simple materials in clever ways. Natural materials are often sophisticated in structure and function, yet they are made from simple, abundant resources. More

External Event

Berlin Science Week 2022 – The Science Slam of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence, “Clear the stage for science”

At our cluster science slam, scientists try everything to entertain their audience, regardless of whether the subject is e.g. mathematics, neuroscience or active material. The sky is the limit when it comes to what’s possible. Costumes, props, movies, power-point presentations or other experimental setups – it is all allowed. Only time sets the limits –

Thursday Morning Talk

Heiner Spiess (Science of Intelligence), “Tools to study the generality of Deep Neural Network Representations”

Abstract: As many of us know by now, Deep Learning has enabled tackling very challenging problems and applications that were previously almost impossible to solve with machine learning. However, for most of the tasks we want to solve with Deep Learning, we need large, if not huge, amounts of data and computing power. This is

Thursday Morning Talk

What are futures made of? Collactive Materials, a joint SCIoI/MoA project

Abstract: The BUA-funded experimental knowledge transfer project CollActive Materials, a collaboration between the Clusters of Excellence Science of Intelligence and Matters of Activity, encourages speculation on what the future has in store. Which intelligent materials will pave our tomorrows? How can substances and materials change our world in an intelligent way? What will the world

Thursday Morning Talk

Thursday morning talk: Nicolas Mandel, “Kangaroos & Quadcopters”

Abstract: The contents of this presentation will be twofold. In the first part the Centre for Robotics of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and its research directions and facilities will be introduced. The research on semantics for the benefit of UAVs, specifically quadcopters, will be highlighted. The second part will contain the personal experiences

Distinguished Speaker Series

Jan De Houwer (Ghent University), “Learning in Individual Organisms, Genes, Machines, and Groups: A New Way of Defining and Relating Learning in Different Systems”

MAR 2.057

Abstract: Learning is a central concept in many scientific disciplines. Communication about research on learning is, however, hampered by the fact that different researchers define learning in different ways. In this talk, we introduce the extended functional definition of learning that can be used across scientific disciplines. We provide examples of how the definition can