HFMI Community Meeting
March
20,
2025 
09:00
- 20:00
In May 2024, the Helmholtz Association took a significant step in advancing artificial intelligence research by launching its Foundation Model Initiative. This ambitious program aims to support the development of foundation models for groundbreaking scientific research. The initiative began with four pilot projects and the establishment of a Synergy Unit, designed to address overarching challenges and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. A second call for proposals was announced later in 2024, with three projects from that iteration starting at the beginning of this year.
To further strengthen collaborative efforts, the initiative is organizing a Community Meeting to bring together scientists working on foundation models from the pilot projects and beyond, facilitating networking and idea exchange. This event follows the workshop on Foundation Models in Science, which is taking place on March 18-19 in Berlin and features leading researchers as speakers, presenting the latest advancements in the field.
Deadline for registration: March 07, 2025
Venue
MDC (BIMSB)
Hannoversche Straße 28
10115 Berlin
Germany
Time
March 20, 2025, 9:00am - March 20, 2025, 6:00pm
Program
Preliminary Schedule
| Time | Agenda |
| 08:30 | Registration opens |
| 09:00 | Welcome: Florian Grötsch (Helmholtz Head Office) |
| 09:15 | Panel discussion: Can FMs beat supervised baselines? Moderator: Martin Schlultz (FZJ) Panelists: David Greenberg (Hereon), Gunjan Joshi (HZDR), Dagmar Kainmueller (MDC), Uwe Ohler (MDC) |
| 10:00 | Invited talk: Compression Methods for Robustness and Transferability (COMFORT) - Tim Roith (DESY) |
| 10:30 | Invited talk: TBA |
| 11:00 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 | World Café: Round-table discussions on: Model understanding Model adaptation Scaling Deployment Data |
| 12:45 | Lunch |
| 13:45 | Presentation of the three new HFMI pilot projects: AqQua - Dagmar Kainmueller (MDC) PROFOUND - Stefan Kesselheim (FZJ) VirtualCell - Nikos Karaiskos (MDC) |
| 15:15 | Coffee break |
| 15:45 | World Café: Round-table discussions on: Licensing (Mod: Tim Drees/Head Office) Model sustainability Compute infrastructure strategies (Mod: Florian Grötsch/Head Office) Model robustness (Mod: Savvas Melidonis/FZJ) |
| 17:00 | Plenary discussion: Reflection on topics from Helmholtz/ELLIS Workshop and World Cafés Moderator: Stefan Kesselheim (FZJ) |
| 18:00 | End of event |