A full house, exciting topics and a lot of exchange: The second HeiCADRetreat at HHU took place on May 9, 2025 – and was once again a complete success! Over 80 participants from a wide range of disciplines came together in the Haus der Universität to spend the whole day working on artificial intelligence and data science. The event was open to various researchers – especially young scientists, doctoral students and postdocs who are interested in networking across their own departments.
The day started with an interesting keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Laura Kallmeyer (Computational Linguistics, HHU). In her speech titled ‘Cognitively Plausible Language Models’, she posed the question of whether AI language models actually think like us – and how they can be made more ‘human’.
Then it got short and sweet: In the ’45 Second Madness’, everyone had just 45 seconds to present themselves and their research. After a total of 61 short pitches, it was clear that the variety of topics was huge – from medicine to speech processing to neuroscience and humanities, almost every research field was included.
The poster session that followed went into more depth: 25 research projects were presented – and the researchers involved were eager and ready to talk to you about their work. It was the perfect opportunity to pick up new ideas, ask questions or simply get a taste of what others are doing in the world of AI.
The afternoon continued with the second keynote speaker, Prof. Dr. Timo Dickscheid from Forschungszentrum Jülich. His talk ‘FAIrly Detailed’ showed how AI and big data are used to map the human brain down to the smallest detail – really exciting!
The researchers who wanted to delve deeper into their own topics were able to discuss their research questions or receive some fresh input afterwards in small groups at the Custom Colloquia.
At the end of the day, there was a party: At the poster award ceremony, the awards for the best posters were presented by HeiCAD's director, Prof. Dr. Martin Mauve – there were prizes for particularly creative, understandable or thought-provoking projects.
The feedback? Positive across the board! Again, many new connections were made between the participants and new projects or opportunities for collaboration were discussed. And for anyone who missed it this time: The HeiCADRetreat will be back in 2026 – so keep your ears open or sign up for our mailinglist!
