Newsroom
Stay informed with our latest news and announcements on this page. For more in-depth content, we also encourage visitors to explore our bimonthly STRUCTURES Newsletter magazine, which features a variety of articles, interviews with members, and background information on our latest research and activities.
STRUCTURES Short Film 4: How can we efficiently and reliably identify structures in large datasets?
In a data-abundant world, the challenge of discerning meaningful patterns becomes ever more crucial. One of the four key research questions of STRUCTURES is how to reliably and efficiently uncover structures in large datasets. Our team of researchers trains specialized unsupervised neural networks to tackle the complexity of structure discovery. These AI algorithms autonomously construct what we term as feature spaces — an abstraction that comes to life through a relatable example: How do people's handwriting styles differ? Our networks possess the ability to learn and interpret distinct handwriting styles. The foundational concepts underlying these abilities can be applied to various structure discovery tasks in diverse fields, including disciplines such as medicine.
Video link (YouTube):
STRUCTURES: How can we efficiently and reliably identify structures in large datasets?
STRUCTURES Short Film 3: What are deep new relations between mathematical & physical structure?
"This is a coffee mug. But for a scientist, it is so much more…" Join us on a fascinating tour through the world of geometry & topology, where intriguing links emerge between physics & mathematics. The study of these connections from an interdisciplinary angle allows us to advance understanding in both disciplines, surpassing what each discipline can achieve independently. The STRUCTURES Cluster in Heidelberg offers a unique environment for scientists from diverse backgrounds to interact and collaborate. Together, our researchers synergize their expertise to drive rapid advancements, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and understanding.
Video link (YouTube):
STRUCTURES: What are deep new relations between mathematical and physical structure?
Complicated structures emerge from simple laws applied to very general conditions. Mathematics plays a unifying role in providing very similar methods for cosmology and quantum fields. Our latest film, available on the STRUCTURES YouTube channel, underlines the unique interdisciplinary collaboration within the STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence, in which theoretical and experimental methods are linked:
Video link (YouTube):
STRUCTURES: Understanding Complex Structures
We are delighted to announce the first anniversary of the STRUCTURES Science Outreach Blog and our social media channels. Under the motto What's that Structure?, the STRUCTURES blog has been a source of knowledge, and inspiration for a broad, scientifically interested audience passionate about understanding how structure, collective phenomena, and complexity emerge from the fundamental laws of physics. Launched in August 2022, the STRUCTURES Blog has become a platform for the exchange, transfer and discussion of scientific ideas and knowledge across diverse disciplines, including physics, mathematics, astronomy and computer science. Complementing this, we provide an extensive offer of news, information, and science communication through our active and engaging social media channels aimed at the public, members, students and colleagues.
We are proud that over the past months, in addition to gaining many new authors and presenting exciting articles, we have achieved a steady growth in visitor numbers. Our blog articles are currently accessed more than forty times a day (median over three months). The STRUCTURES blog has found a big positive resonance also on our Social Media channels, where we count 160 Twitter and 193 Instagram followers as of July 31. In addition, with the beginning of STRUCTURES' Public Talk Series Akademische Mittagspause 2023, the STRUCTURES Cluster has launched its new YouTube channel as a new content offer, on which you can already find a large amount of content related to the talks.
Throughout August, we will celebrate the Blog's and Social Media anniversary with various posts, movies and a special blog article . As a beginning, and to inaugurate our recently launched YouTube channel, we present one of four upcoming short movies about the STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence, titled "We Are STRUCTURES":
Short Film: We are STRUCTURES
YouTube: We are STRUCTURES
On the occasion of this anniversary, we would like to warmly thank all of our blog authors, colleagues, visitors and everyone involved behind the scenes. The STRUCTURES Blog would not be possible without you, and the efforts of many!
Weblinks:
We are happy to announce the workshop Human Intelligence (HI) Meets Artificial Intelligence (AI) jointly organized by the STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence and Field of Focus IV (Self-Regulation And Regulation: Individuals and Societies). The workshop will take place from October 4 to 5, 2023 at Marsilius Kolleg, Heidelberg.
The registration is open until September 15. The link and the programme can be found at:
https://structures.uni-heidelberg.de/workshop_HI_meets_AI.
About the Workshop: Human intelligence (HI) emerges through the coordinated activity of a highly intricate and interconnected neural network, our brain. Understanding HI thus rests on understanding how this network implements cognitive processes, a question tackled by cognitive and neuro-scientists for decades. On the other hand, in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the past few years have witnessed considerable progress in developing and understanding artificial deep neural networks. These models share common principles with the brain, sometimes even borrowing ideas from neuroscientific principles, although they also differ in important ways. As it stands, using modern AI tools to improve our understanding on HI, and vice versa, is a scientific field still in its infancy.
This workshop brings together experts on HI and AI to highlight recent progress in these areas and stimulate novel ideas bridging both fields. Our overarching questions are: How can AI help to better understand HI, how can we leverage deep learning models to explain neural mechanisms underlying HI and how can HI inspire the development of AI? Our invited speakers have focused and are currently focusing on these questions. We hope that this workshop will connect researchers on HI and AI, and identify novel collaborations between the fields.
Further information:
An international team of researchers led by STRUCTURES member Fabian Schneider predicts that black hole mergers produce chirp sounds in two universal frequency ranges.
They are mysterious, exciting and inescapable – black holes are some of the most exotic objects in the Universe. With gravitational-wave detectors, it is possible to detect the chirp sound that two black holes produce when they merge, approximately 70 such chirps have been found so far. Based on the frequency evolution of this chirp signal, scientists can infer the so-called “chirp mass”, a combination of the two individual black hole masses. So far, it has been assumed that the merging black holes can have any mass. In their new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, STRUCTURES Member Fabian Schneider (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, HITS) and his team, however, predict that in this “ocean of voices”, chirps preferentially occur in two universal frequency ranges. The team's simulations align precisely with observations of the "stellar graveyard" – a collection of all known masses of the neutron-star and black-hole remains of massive stars – which reveal intriguing peaks at approximately 8 and 14 solar masses. With gravitational-wave astronomy paving the way for unprecedented insights into the cosmos, this research opens up a new frontier of exploration, helping scientists understand better where the singing black holes in this ocean of voices come from.
Weblinks:
We are happy to present the twelfth volume of the STRUCTURES Newsletter with the following topics:
- New STRUCTURES Professors: Michela Mapelli & Tristan Bereau
- Workshop: Human Intelligence Meets Artificial Intelligence
- CP 2: The Challenge of Understanding Planet Formation
- We Are STRUCTURES
- From Space to Earth: Uncovering the Potential Role of Meteorites in Kick-Starting Life
- Fast Exoplanet Detection with Conditional Invertible Neural Networks (cINNs)
The STRUCTURES Project Management Office is happy to answer questions and to receive feedback.