04.07.2025 - ELLIS Unit Stuttgart Summer Symposium 2025
On July 04, 2025 the ELLIS Unit Stuttgart hosted it’s annual Summer Symposium. With about 70 attendees,the Event attracted significant interest and was well-received. The event brought together leading researchers, postdocs, and students representing all 4 core Research Areas of the ELLIS Unit Stuttgart: Interactive Intelligent Systems, Natural and Programming Language Processing, Learning Theory, and Robot Learning.
Prof. Dr. Thilo Hagenberg kicked off the Event with his Keynote on “Language Model Evaluation From a Psychological Perspective”. As an expert in AI safety, AI ethics, machine behavior in generative models, as well as the intersection of machine learning and psychology, he outlined how psychology can inform behavioral Tests for LLMS, and how such tests can discover emergent abilities in LLMS. As a Deep dive, his Keynote focused on the phenomenon of deception in LLMs - an ability that carries significant implications for alignment and safety.
The Agenda furthermore included diverse topcis and the following Lightning talks:
Ben Richardson: ISyHand: a low-cost dexterous,anthropomorphic robot Hand
Aryaz Eghbali: PocGen - Generating Proof-of-Concept Exploits for Vulnerabilities in Javascript Packages
Aneesh Barthakur: Equality Constrained Learning
Islem Bouzenia: LLM Agents at Software Lab
Amin Totounferoush: Math-Inspired Inductive Biases Enable Robust PDE Generalization
Mojtaba Nayyeri: Towards Foundation Model on Temporal Knowledge Graph Reasoning
Jiao Chuhan: HAGI: Head-Assisted Gaze Imputation for Mobile Eye Trackers
Beatriz Souza:Learning Guided Execution
Not only did the PhD students have the opportunity to exchange directly with the top AI PIs from both the University of Stuttgart and the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems at the Symposium, but they also got the chance to present their own research during the poster session, discuss their results,and explore possible collaborations with peers. The competition was fierce, but in the end Andrew Schulz (MPI-IS) won the Best Poster Award for his poster “Material Intelligence of Animal Whiskers”.
Attendees agreed that the ELLIS Unit Stuttgart Summer Symposium provided an excellent overview of current research trends and achievements as well as a great chance to connect with fellow researchers. Symposia like the ELLIS Unit Stuttgart Summer Symposium provide a crucial platform for young researchers to share insights and collaborate.