Max Planck Institut Informatik

Max-Planck Institute for Informatics (MPI) is a research institute in computer science with a focus on algorithms and their applications in a broad sense. Founded in 1990 it has since then been part of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Germany's largest society for fundamental research. In 2006, the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings of non-university research institutions (based on international peer review by academics) placed the Max Planck Society as No.1 in the world for science research, and No.3 in technology research (behind AT&T Corporation and the Argonne National Laboratory n the United States). Members of the institute have received various awards. Professor Kurt Mehlhorn (in 1986) and Professor Hans-Peter Seidel (in 2003) received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Professor Kurt Mehlhorn (in 1995) and Professor Thomas Lengauer (in 2003) received the Konrad-Zuse-Medal, and in 2004 Professor Harald Ganzinger received the Herbrand Award.

Within the MPI for Informatics, five scientific directors (Prof. Kurt Mehlhorn, Prof. Bernt Schiele, Prof. Thomas Lengauer, Prof. Hans-Peter Seidel and Prof. Gerhard Weikum), 31 research groups and overall more than 200 scientists perform research in various computer science related areas. Thereby, the research focus lies on algorithms as the central subject and the investigated fields range from foundations (algorithms and complexity, programming logics) to a variety of application domains as for example computer graphics, geometric computation, constraint solving, program verification, databases and information systems, and computational biology/bioinformatics. The institute actively seeks to publish the results and findings in professional journals and conferences and supports the development of prototype systems and collaborations with researchers from academia and industry alike.

The MPI for Informatics also plays an important role in the Cluster of Excellence on “Multimodal Computing and Interaction” (MMCI), which was established by the DFG (German Research Foundation) in 2007. All directors of the institute are principal investigators of the cluster, and Hans-Peter Seidel is the scientific coordinator. The Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction (MMCI) is a computer science research institution within Saarland University, Saarbrücken funded by the German research foundation. The MMCI has three core partners: the Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Max-Planck Institute for Software Systems, all co-located on Saarbrückens Computer Science Campus. The MMCI has more than 100 employees, including 17 independent research groups comparable to assistant professor level. The scientific employees of the MMCI perform research in computer science related areas that aim to search or understand any kind of multimodal data as for example video, text or audio data on the web. To the MMCI belong research groups in the fields of Computational Linguistics, Data Mining, Bioinformatics, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, Algorithms and Complexity, Security and Human Computer Interaction.