PhD Positions – Strategic Partnership between Google and MPI for Informatics – Saarbrücken Research
Center for Visual Computing, Interaction and Artificial Intelligence (VIA) at MPI for Informatics
The Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Informatics in Saarbrücken (Germany) and Google have started a
strategic partnership to establish the Saarbrücken Research Center for Visual Computing, Interaction
and Artificial Intelligence (VIA) at the MPI for Informatics.
The center will investigate basic frontier research challenges in computer graphics, computer vision, and
human machine interaction, at the intersection to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Research
results of the center will be openly published. The VIA center is directed by Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt
from MPI for Informatics.
The center will work on developing important methodical foundations of future intelligent, interactive,
immersive and autonomous computing systems that could support humans in their private and work lives
and that critically depend on advanced approaches in visual computing, interaction and artificial
intelligence. The research conducted at the center could lay the foundations, for example, for new ways
to communicate and interact with and via computing systems of the future, for better ways to enable
intelligent computing systems to perceive and safely interact with the human world, for new ways to
simulate complex scenes with computer graphics, for new ways to build highly immersive virtual and
augmented reality environments, or for innovative ways to create intelligent visual digital assistants.
Research in the center will pave the way for new algorithms that, on the one hand, empower profoundly
advanced functional capabilities in the aforementioned areas, and at the same time enable better
accountability for the underlying algorithms in the form of enhanced explainability, robustness and
trustworthiness.
The new VIA research center at MPI for Informatics offers a striving and inspiring environment, and world
class research facilities to conduct forefront research. We are looking for PhD students with a background
and interest in the topics of the center, such as:
- Neural rendering and neural scene representations
- Foundations of machine learning for visual computing
- Virtual human capture and modeling
- Human animation
- 3D/4D reconstruction and scene understanding
- virtual and augmented reality
- New interaction paradigms, e.g. for AR, VR, augmented humans
Applicants for PhD positions should have a Master degree (or equivalent) in computer science or a related
field and have an outstanding academic record. Admission with a Bachelor degree is feasible with
additional requirements. We further expect research experience in one of the aforementioned fields of
work, ideally already documented by peer reviewed publications in the top tier publication venues of the
respective fields. Candidates should have solid programming experience. We also expect the candidates
to be fluent in both written and spoken English. In case you are interested, please submit your complete
application package including a CV, a list of publications, a statement of purpose, transcripts,
language/admission test results (e.g. TOEFL, GRE if available) and the contacts of at least two references
via Email to:
via-applications@mpi-inf.mpg.de
The Max Planck Society seeks to increase the number of women in those areas where they are
underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply. The Max Planck Society is further
committed to employing more individuals with handicaps and particularly encourages these to apply.