Who is financing our research?

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning currently attract great interest in society the media. As a research group at a publicly financed University we are duty-bound to take part in the public debate, to inform and to lead with our expertise. Independence and impartiality, as well as the constitutionally mandated freedom of research and teaching are prerequisites for this role. These pages thus provide information on who is financing our research, and how. 

 

Personal Income

Philipp Hennig is a full-time tenured public servant of the State of Baden-Württemberg. He also holds an adjunct position as a scientific researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, for which he receives part-time remuneration according to a federal TVöD pay grade. Currently (as of 2020) he does not receive income or other financial contributions from private entities.

 

Financing of our Chair’s research

Research, even research of theoretical nature, costs money. To stay internationally competitive for the best ideas and brightest mines, we retain significant technical infrastructure. The largest budget item, however, are the salaries of PhD students (which, in the German academic system, are employees). Attracing and ensuring the necessary funding is a core task of the Chair. The list below explains who is financing our research. We thank all of the listed institutions for their trust and generosity. By the way: Research funding is not payed directly to the Professor, but managed for us by the central financial administration of the University.

 

Base funding

The State Ministry of Research and Arts of Baden-Württemberg provides us with an endowment. This includes investment funds, running expenses and the salaries of several research associates and the secretary. 

 

European third party funding

The European Research Council (ERC) is financing a significant part of our research through its Starting Grantscheme (ERC StG 757275 — Project PANAMA) and a Consolidator Grant (ERC CoG 101123955 ANUBIS).

 

Federal Funding

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research finances the joint research project ADIMEM (01IS18052B). The Chair is one of four partners in this consortium (the other groups are those of Jacob Macke (Project Coordination), Philipp Berens and Markus Oberländer). 

 

Intramural Funds

Philipp Hennig is a Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence Machine Learning (see also the Cluster’s blog); of the Tübingen AI Center; and on the faculty of the International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS). Among many other measures, these large consortia include funding lines for individual research projects for which the project members can apply in an internal application processes (so called intramural funds).  There are currently several of these projects in process in our group, typically in collaboration with other groups. Since all these consortia are funded from public (federal and state) sources, these projects, too, are effectively publicly funded.

 


Industrial third-party funding

Microsoft Research Cambridge funded one PhD student in our group. The project was designed and proposed by Philipp Hennig, and selected in a competitive internal process at Microsoft. The funds are transferred by Microsoft to the University, which administers them (and employs the student). In exchange, Microsoft has received a non-exclusive license to any intellectual property arising from the project. There are no further contractual obligations vis-à-vis Microsoft, and Philipp Hennig receives no personal income or other personal financial incentives for this project.

The Groups cooperates with Google Deepmind for the development of an open-source industry standard for the Training of deep Learning architectures. The corresponding working group is lead cooperatively by Dr. Frank Schneider in Tübingen, and Dr. Georg Dahl at Google. To support these activities, Google granted the group an unrestricted gift in 2023. These comparably small funds are directly used to fund research activites, and do not lead to personal gains for Dr. Schneider or Prof. Hennig.

In addition, the group has in the past hosted two external guests whose research was funded by industrial partners. One of them was an employee of Robert Bosch GmbH, the other was employed by ETAS GmbH (a subsidiary of Robert Bosch). No financial payments are made for these two projects, neither to the University of Tübingen nor Philipp Hennig personally. 

 

 

 


Completed Funding Lines

Before working at the University

Before joining the University of Tübingen, we were an Independent Max Planck Research Group at the MPI for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. 

 

In the past we received funding from the German Research Union (DFG), out of different funding lines and for several research projects. The DFG is a registered charity whose budget is financed by the tax-payer (2/3 by the federal government, 1/3 by the States). 

 

The beginnings of the group 

The group was founded on a grant in the Emmy Noether Programme of the DFG (from April 2015 until December 2016. The funding ended with the establishment of the Max Planck Research Group because the two funding lines are not compatible).