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Horses, airplanes, and the question of what explainable AI actually explains
The desire to peek inside the "black box" of AI, to understand what a model has learned and how it makes decisions, is nearly as old as AI itself. BIFOLD and the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) not only developed one of the first methods (Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP)), to systematically explain the decisions of neural networks, they also played an important role in the past and future of XAI.

From Research to Practice
Barrie Kersbergen's PhD thesis on scalable session-based recommender systems powers real-time recommendations at one of Europe's leading retailers — impactful research with direct industry applications and open-source results, co-supervised by BIFOLD´s research group lead, Sebastian Schelter.

ICML 2025 Conference Contributions
BIFOLD researchers from the DAMS, DEEM, ML and MLsec groups will present several contributions at the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2025). The conference will take place July 13–19, 2025, in Vancouver, Canada.

HPI appoints BIFOLD fellow Eleni Tzirita Zacharatou as professor
Prof. Dr. Eleni Tzirita Zacharatou, BIFOLD Junior Fellow and former postdoctoral researcher in the DIMA group, has been appointed W2 Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam. Her research focuses on advancing spatial data science through systems and abstractions that support efficient, large-scale data analysis, with applications in sustainability, equity, and social dynamics.

NebulaStream Goes Open Source
NebulaStream, an extensible, high-performance streaming engine for multi-modal edge applications is now open-source. Developed for the Internet of Things by BIFOLD, DIMA, and DFKI researchers, this novel stream processing engine eases the analysis of sensor data in real-time. The source code is now freely available under an Apache 2.0 license.

Looking Back at SIGMOD/PODS 2025 in Berlin
Between June 22nd and June 27th, Berlin hosted members of the international data management community at this year’s SIGMOD/PODS conference, one of the leading conferences in data management. With inspiring keynotes, vibrant exchange, and a record turnout, it was a fantastic week of science and collaboration. We are proud to have co-organized this landmark event!

New Whitepaper on XAI
Prof. Dr. Wojciech Samek is co-author of the new white paper “Explainable AI”, published today by the Plattform Lernende Systeme. Together with colleagues from the “Technological Enablers and Data Science” working group of the Platform Lernende Systeme, they explored different application areas, guided by the question: Who should be told what, how and for what purpose?

SIGMOD 2025 Conference Contributions
BIFOLD researchers will present multiple contributions at the SIGMOD/PODS 2025 conference, scheduled for June 22–27, 2025, in Berlin.

Now Open: The Neverending Cure
Mai 28th, 2025, we opened the new exhibition THE NEVERENDING CURE by kennedy+swan - the BIFOLD artists in residence 2024/2025 - at TU Berlin's main building. Roughly 80 guests enjoyed the inspiring artwork and exchange between artists and scienctists.

Researcher Spotlight: Dr. Simon Krug
Dr. Simon Krug is a former researcher in the Machine Learning Group at BIFOLD with a focus on computational alchemy and theoretical chemistry. He earned his PhD summa cum laude in 2024 for his work on mathematical methods to model atomic substitutions in molecules.