The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is funding a further 15 Emmy Noether Groups in the field of “Methods in Artificial Intelligence”. This was decided by the DFG’s Joint Committee in Bonn. Four of these awards are being made in connection with the DFG’s participation in the Global Minds Initiative Germany run by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. The funding will enable researchers who were previously active in France, the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands to establish independent AI research groups in Germany.
The funded projects were selected by means of a two-stage proposal submission and review process. From a total of 178 draft proposals, an internationally recognised panel of experts selected 36, whose applicants were then invited to submit proposals. 15 of these were selected for funding.
All funded projects aim to significantly expand the methodological and algorithmic foundations of artificial intelligence and generate fresh insights into key properties such as robustness, explainability, efficiency and scalability.
The projects cover both the mathematical and computer science foundations of neural networks, deep learning and generative AI, as well as domain-specific application potential, addressing such aspects as the harmonisation of heterogeneous geodata, political bias in commercial AI chatbots, and medical risk assessment based on patient data.
The group of funding recipients is diverse in terms of background, geographical location, gender and career stage, with researchers in early career phases benefiting in particular. The aim is to counter the brain drain by offering attractive research conditions in Germany.
The 15 new funding recipients under the Emmy Noether Programme
[in alphabetical order of funding recipients; those who have yet to decide where their Emmy Noether Group will be based are listed without specifying the location; GMIG indicates funding in connection with the DFG’s participation in the Global Minds Initiative Germany]:
- Dr.-Ing. Nikita Araslanov, “ACTIVUS: Representations and Foundation Models for Actionable Visual Understanding”, TU Munich
- Dr. André Biedenkapp, “From Mediocre to Masterful Generalists: The Power of Context in RL”, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
- Dr. Simon Buchholz, “Causality and representation learning for interventional foundation models”
- Dr. Nicole Hartman, “AI unlocks the Higgs boson's potential”, Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich
- Dr. Johannes Hertrich, “Flow-based Generative Models and Optimal Transport for Sampling and Inverse Problems”, University of Göttingen (GMIG)
- Dr. Daniel Höller, “Neuro-Symbolic Methods in Sequential Decision Making”
- Dr. Jovita Lukasik, “Enhancing Network Efficiency through Combined Weight Space Learning and Architecture Search”, University of Siegen
- Dr. Alireza Modirshanechi, “Sense of control in natural and artificial intelligence”
- Dr. Johannes C. Paetzold, “Making AI Understand Structure: Improving Vision (Language) Models through Graphs, Topology, and Human-Aligned Design”, LMU Munich
- Dr. Paul Röttger, “AI Methods for Measuring and Mitigating Political Bias in AI Systems” (GMIG)
- Professor Dr.-Ing. Marc Rußwurm, “Earth Embeddings: Implicit Neural Representations across Geospatial Data Modalities”, University of Bonn (GMIG)
- Dr. Mariia Seleznova, “RMT4DL: Random Matrix Theory for Deep Learning”, TU Darmstadt
- Chelsea Rose Sidrane, PhD, “Verification for Learning and Learning for Verification” (GMIG)
- Dr. Dominik Schreiber, “Scalable Automated Reasoning”
- Dr. Sophia Wagner, “Multimodal representation learning for generalizable patient embeddings”, University of Heidelberg
Funding for Emmy Noether Groups focusing on artificial intelligence methods is one of two priorities within the DFG’s strategic funding initiative in the field of artificial intelligence, adopted in 2019 and updated in 2024. In addition, eight Research Units in the field of artificial intelligence have been awarded funding.
In this way, excellent early career researchers focusing on AI methods are provided with attractive conditions for outstanding AI research. The aim is to establish the next generation of leading AI researchers.
The initiative enables up to 45 Emmy Noether Groups to be funded across four rounds of calls. 15 AI Emmy Noether Groups were established under the two previous rounds of calls in 2020 and 2021. The fourth and, for the time being, final call was issued on 1 April 2026.
The Emmy Noether Programme is aimed at highly qualified postdoctoral researchers and junior professors with temporary contracts in the early stages of their academic careers. It enables them to qualify for a university professorship by independently leading an Emmy Noether Group over a period of six years.
Further Information
Funding Related to Artificial Intelligence
2026 Call under the Emmy Noether Programme on “Methods in Artificial Intelligence”