AI Made in Germany: 90 Seconds to Pitch the Future
Meet the Next Generation in AI Research, some of theearly-career researchers shaping the future of artificial intelligence across Germany as they present their work in just 90 seconds. This campaign showcases the breadth and diversity of artificial intelligence as a field and its many subfields, featuring voices of PhD students and young researchers from across the German AI ecosystem. It brings together a wide range of perspectives across regions, institution types, and areas of AI research, spanning universities, research institutes, and AI centres nationwide.
As part of the lead-up to IJCAI-ECAI 2026 in Bremen, the social media campaign Next Generation in AI Research highlights the strength of Germany’s AI ecosystem — from foundational machine learning and robotics to trustworthy AI, healthcare, climate science, industry applications, and human-centered technologies. By showcasing these research areas and the scientists driving them, the campaign offers a snapshot of the priorities that define Germany's AI landscape and influence the future direction of AI research and innovation.
These short presentations aim to amplify emerging researchers and their ideas while encouraging audiences to explore their work further — whether by visiting a project website, reading a paper, or connecting with the researchers directly online or during IJCAI-ECAI 2026. More broadly, the campaign seeks to foster visibility, collaboration, and a more inclusive and internationally connected AI research community — one built not on the work of a single mind, but on the collaboration and teamwork of researchers who have co-created spaces of knowledge sharing and scientific excellence since the very first IJCAI in 1969.
In the month leading up to IJCAI-ECAI 2026, join us in discovering the next generation of AI researchers and how they are shaping tomorrow's AI.
If you are interested in contributing to the campaign and showcasing your AI research in just 90 seconds, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 Press Team.
“AI systems are becoming agents that make decisions in courts, classrooms, and hospitals. The challenge is to ensure they do the right things for the right reasons, guided by human values. Aligning AI with human values is not just a technical challenge – it is also a political one.”
Melya Boukheddimi
DFKI Robotics Innovation Center
Designing AI-driven frameworks for task-oriented humanoid robots and legged locomotion. Contact: DFKI Profile
“My research is driven by an ideal: to develop humanoid robots that help people—from assisting in disaster response to reducing the physical burden of demanding work.”
“AI will only truly transform healthcare if we can trust its decisions. Accuracy alone is not enough. AI systems must also be trustworthy. In healthcare, that means being transparent in their reasoning, fair across different patient groups, and rigorously evaluated beyond performance metrics alone.”
Brian Moser
DFKI / University of Kaiserslautern
Investigating the boundaries of strongly-conditional generative AI for image enhancement and dataset distillation. Contact: Personal Website | LinkedIn
“When images are used to make decisions, they need to be more than just pretty – they need to be trustworthy.”
Christina Plump
University of Bremen
Optimisation under uncertainty in application domains. Contact: LinkedIn
“If you have an optimisation problem in an experimental domain and are seeking collaboration, reach out to us. Let us work on uncertainty-aware optimisation methods that improve reliability and reduce the risk of overconfident decisions.”
Theo Vincent
DFKI Darmstadt, SAIROL
Developing autonomous learning algorithms that solve sequential decision problems with minimal resource requirements. Contact: LinkedIn | Bluesky | DFKI Interview
“I am excited about the future of learning algorithms that can learn from experience, just as humans do. To find out more about this research, visit my website.”
Isabelle Kuhlmann
University of Hagen
Developing formal methods for identifying and measuring inconsistencies in complex knowledge systems to strengthen trustworthy AI. Contact: University Website
“Databases contain errors. Experts disagree. Complex systems often have to make sense of incomplete or conflicting knowledge. My aim is to contribute to the logical and algorithmic foundations that enable AI systems to cope with these challenges—not only by providing answers, but also by reasoning more carefully about the knowledge behind those answers.”
Gesina Schwalbe
University of Ulm
Researching explanation-based action planning (Erklärungsbasierte Handlungsplanung) within the Correctable Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Group. Contact: Website
“Unlike the human brain, we can look inside the intermediate representations of artificial neural networks. In my group, we inspect, verify, and ultimately improve neural networks, making AI-based systems more trustworthy. After all, before we can trust AI, we first have to understand what it has actually learned.”
About IJCAI-ECAI 2026
From August 15–21, 2026, Bremen will host the 35th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, organised jointly with the European Artificial Intelligence Association as IJCAI-ECAI 2026. Since its inception in 1969, IJCAI has played a pivotal role as a forum for showcasing the frontiers of artificial intelligence research and applications, and thus represents the oldest continuously running conference on artificial intelligence.
Since 2016, IJCAI has been held annually, with each edition organized in a different host city under the responsibility of a Local Arrangements Committee. For the 2026 edition, the bid to host the IJCAI-ECAI 2026 was won by the committee chaired by Prof. Tanja Schultz of Universität Bremen, Prof. Frank Kirchner of Universität Bremen and German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and Dr.-Ing.Monika Michaelis of the U Bremen Research Alliance.
The work of the Local Arrangement Committee in 2026 is supported by three press offices: the U Bremen Research Alliance, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and the German Informatics Society (GI).
IJCAI typically attracts over 3,000 participants, offering a scale that safeguards intellectual diversity while remaining compact enough to enable meaningful scientific interaction. It brings together leading technical researchers, university experts, and industry professionals from around the world.
In 2026, the conference is held jointly with the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI), a flagship European AI meeting organised under the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), a non-profit organisation that promotes AI research and collaboration across Europe. ECAI provides a platform for presenting scientific advances and a forum for discussing and disseminating European AI research directions.