AI Research
We are fascinated by the capabilities of biological brains and by the idea of replicating their basic principles in computers.
AI Research
We are fascinated by the capabilities of biological brains and by the idea of replicating their basic principles in computers. We are pursuing this goal from three different angles:
- Mathematical:
We develop theoretical models to describe the phenomenon of intelligence on a high level of abstraction. We wonder: What exactly is the mathematical problem which the brain solves when it forms a mental model of reality? - Computational:
We build brain-inspired algorithms to solve cognitive tasks with a focus on unsupervised learning of invariant representations - Neuroscientific:
We draw our inspiration from 21st-century brain research and we validate our computational models and abstract theories by verifying their consistency with biological findings.
Rise of AI Conference
Helmut gave a talk at the Rise of AI Conference 2019 in Berlin, discussing the hypothesis of a single, cortical algorithm' and its implications for our research direction.
To watch the video please klick here.


Towards Assumption-free AI
In this article, we are sharing a few preliminary results which give hope that our strategy – as philosophical as it may appear – will lead to practically useful results.
A White Paper on the Future of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is a new research field at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany and we want to clearly outline our research strategy going forward. To explain our strategy in detail, we have published a white paper you can download here.
Future of AI research challenge
Recently, we had the pleasure of hosting the finale of our ekipa research challenge „The Future of AI“ at the Innovation Center here at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. The four finalists presented their ideas around neuro-inspired artificial intelligence sparking a lot of discussions.
Congratulations to the NeuroTHIx team (Du Xiaorui, Yavuzhan Erdem, and Cristian Axenie) who took home the grand price of 2,500€ for their idea of combining SOMs and Hebbian learning to merge, predict or de-noise multiple sensory modalities. Both Du and Yavuzhan will join the AI Research team as interns working on extensions of their idea.
Congratulations to the runner-up Roelant Ossewaarde and Kashef Karim, Alexander Ji-San Lenz, Mu’taz Abumathkur, and Sean McFadden for taking home the prize for third place. We were all #inspired by your curiosity and the contributions to this really complex topic.
Also big thank you to Robin Rhiel, Justin Gemeri, Nico Heby, Viktoria Voloshan, and everyone else at ekipa for the work on the challenge.
To watch the video please klick here.


University Challenge
We are partnering with the smart start-up company ekipa to organize a University Challenge. Develop your idea of how life after Deep Learning might look like to win research internship in our AI team!
stay up-to-date
For more information and articles on our research visit us on our Medium blog.