CLS Researchers gather at the 2024 Retreat

The overall aim of the annual CLS retreat is to strengthen the CLS community and optimize the conditions for CLS to deliver outstanding research outcomes. The 2024 edition was held in the historic and beautiful Hotel Schloss Reinach, located in the village of Freiburg-Munzingen, surrounded by vineyards and views of the Black Forest. Participants travelled from Zurich, Stuttgart, Tübingen, Saarbrücken and beyond to spend valuable time together.

For the scientific program, lightning talks and posters from the CLS doctoral and postdoctoral researchers were complemented by research talks from Niao He (Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zürich, leading the Optimization & Decision Intelligence (ODI) Group), Florian Hartmann (Independent Research Group Leader at the MPI for Intelligent Systems, leading the Biomimetic Materials and Machines Group), Jan Eric Lenssen (leading the Geometric Representation Learning (GRL) group within department D2: Computer Vision and Machine Learning of the Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics), and Jonas Geiping (Principal Investigator at the ELLIS Institute in Tübingen, co-affiliated with the MPI for Intelligent Systems and the Tübingen AI Center, and leading a group for safety- & efficiency- aligned learning).

The program further featured a fascinating panel discussion with Bernhard Schölkopf, Robert Katzschmann, Daniel Razansky and Niao He on a topic suggested by the doctoral students: "How to Stay Competitive in the Global Research Landscape".

The student representatives (Malte Prinzler, Vivian Nastl and Julian Nubert) led a highly productive working session in which Center researchers were invited to contribute to a student-led Wiki, with the aim of sharing information on how to master the specific challenges of the CLS program, especially the research exchange and relocation between Switzerland and Germany. This was well-received and the project will be developed further. Finally, there was time to connect more informally during an excursion, and a very entertaining and challenging quiz devised and hosted by CLS fellows Núria Armengol Urpí and Timothy Gebhardt.

The event was conceived and planned by CLS Coordinator Sarah Danes, with further organisational support provided by Nisha Tyagi and Oleksii Ovsianko; all three are members of the Scientific Coordination Office (SCO) at the MPI for Intelligent Systems.  Coordination from the ETH side was provided by Giulia Rivino from the ETH AI Center. The student representative team of Vivian Nastl, Hamza Keurti, Julian Nubert and Malte Prinzler made valuable contributions to the program and sessions.

Image credit: Oleksii Ovsianko/SCO/ MPI for Intelligent Systems