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. 

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.

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.

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.