iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Constantin Rothkopf

Charley Wu @thecharleywu.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Congratulations to @tuda.bsky.social @goetheuni.bsky.social & @unimainz.bsky.social on being named @dfg.de Excellence Universities! 🥳 As @rheinmainunis.bsky.social we're building a global research hub in the heart of Europe 🇪🇺 Thanks to all who made this happen! www.rhein-main-universitaeten.de/en

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Rhein-Main-Universitäten @rheinmainunis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

🎉 WIR HABEN ES GESCHAFFT: Die Allianz der #RheinMainUniversitäten (RMU) aus @goetheuni.bsky.social, @unimainz.bsky.social & @tuda.bsky.social wird ab 2027 im Rahmen der #Exzellenzstrategie als #Exzellenzverbund gefördert: www.rhein-main-universitaeten.de/news/rhein-m... @dfg.de @wissenschaftsrat.de

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If you are interested in understanding human behavior in ecological, everyday tasks through computational models, including RL, optimal control, POMDPs, and developing new computational approaches, including inverse modeling and program induction, consider applying to the #ELLISPhD Program.

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ELLIS @ellis.eu · 01/10/2026

🚨 Apply now for the #ELLISPhD Program! 🎓 Work with leading AI/ML researchers across Europe, with exchange visits & joint supervision. The application deadline is 31 Oct. Get all info & apply now at ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...

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Antonia Wüst @toniwuest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Excited to share that our paper ZendoWorld has been accepted to #NeurIPS2026! 🎉 ZendoWorld tests interactive visual reasoning and demonstrates that current agents (VLM and NeSy) still struggle with both rule induction and informative experimentation 🤖💭

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

We can do a follow-up study, barista version ...

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Costs for target fill level, effort, and spill avoidance were sufficient to reproduce individuals' pouring trajectories, precision patterns and adaptive strategy changes. These findings suggest that human pouring reflects near-optimal control shaped by sensorimotor constraints and notions of “full”.

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

To explain this, we learned a compact model of the liquid dynamics with SINDYc and embedded it in stochastic optimal feedback control with signal-dependent noise. The model reproduced key features of the moment-to-moment behavior. 3/5

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Participants poured from 3 containers into 3 vessels, self-paced and fast. Movements varied widely, yet each person maintained a remarkably stable preferred “headroom” between the liquid and the rim— across containers & vessels, even when pouring faster. 2/5

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Pouring a cup of coffee looks trivial. It isn’t. Humans effortlessly control nonlinear liquid dynamics across different vessels and speeds—while robots still struggle. In our new preprint, we ask how the human motor system solves this everyday control problem. 1/5

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Lars C. Reining @lreining.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Excited this is finally out! I am happy to have built this together with Rabea Turon, @tsawallis.bsky.social and all the others!🎉

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

@lreining.bsky.social presented the talk 'Regularization more than representational capacity drives heuristic discovery in Bounded Meta-Learned Inference' at #cogsci2026. The work, together with Finn Radatz & Nora Cremille came out of a course project in our MSc Cognitive Science program.

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Reposted by Constantin Rothkopf

Antonia Wüst @toniwuest.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Can AI agents act like scientists when reasoning about visual scenes? 🔬 Not just label what they see, but form explicit hypotheses, design experiments to test them, and revise their beliefs in light of the evidence. We built ZendoWorld to find out!

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

If you are interested in navigation, this is the conference to go to be up to date on research, with the right size of participants and plenty of opportunities for discussion in a fantastic setting in the mountains, this time in Banff, Canada. Thanks for inviting us, we'll be back in two years! 2/2

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

With Fabian Kessler & Julia Frankenstein we presented the talk Probabilistic path planning as a computational model of human sensorimotor navigation behavior and the poster Active shaping of spatial uncertainty through coordinated eye, head, and body movements during navigation at #iNAV2026 1/2

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Thanks to the committee: Nanthia Suthana, Frank Jäkel, Loes van Dam, @tsawallis.bsky.social 4/4

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

participant-by-participant, trial-by-trial, moment-by-moment, thereby explaining the shift from active learning to active sensing. This will allow the characterization of neuronal activity in relation to internal beliefs and planning, rather than to physical position in space. 3/4

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

sequential decision-making under uncertainty, explaining the origin of human navigation strategies, reproducing biases and variability in human navigation across many datasets, and explaining how the movement of body, head, and gaze are coordinated to actively shape spatial uncertainties 2/4

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

On June 29th 2026, Fabian Kessler defended his PhD thesis 'Probabilistic path planning as a computational model of human navigation under uncertainty' with distinction. Congratulations! Important and fundamental contributions to understanding human goal-directed navigation in the framework of 1/4

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

shape demonstration-based learning with inverse sequential decision-making and relating this back to human gaze. Thanks to the committee: Loes van Dam, Ute Schmid, Frank Jäkel, and @tsawallis.bsky.social 3/3

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

framework of sequential decision-making under uncertainty, characterizing human strategies in constrained optimization problems, generating rationales of human sequential decisions via program induction based on a grammar derived from think-aloud protocols, and finally showing how task demands 2/3

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

On May 27th 2026, @ingaibs.bsky.social defended her PhD thesis 'Cognitive strategies and explanations for sequential decision-making: a task-centric approach' with distinction. Congratulations! Beautiful and super careful contributions to computationally categorizing problem-solving tasks in the 1/3

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

5) Lukas Maninger, Lina Eicke-Kanani, Anna-Lena Eckert, Constantin A. Rothkopf, Thomas S. A. Wallis: Perception of causality depends on sensory uncertainties and biases in collision events

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

3) Tobias Thomas, Constantin A. Rothkopf: Preference elicitation reveals stable Individual differences in costs of saccadic eye movements 4) Niteesh Midlagajni, Carola Stork, Jolande Fooken, Constantin Rothkopf: Gaze behavior while pouring a cup of coffee

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

1) Inga Ibs, Ingolf Tegtmeier, Constantin A. Rothkopf: Gaze reveals how task demands shape learning from demonstrations 2) Tobias Niehues, Dominik Straub, Constantin Rothkopf: People's cost functions in sensorimotor decision-making reveal complex effort costs

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Our group contributed to the annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society #VSS2026 with a symposium organized by @ookenfooken.bsky.social: 'What makes a task naturalistic? Towards a theory-inspired approach to studying visually-guided behaviour', and five posters:

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Thanks to @agreco.bsky.social and Jannik Reichert for organizing the #NeuroAISymposium2026 and inviting us, this was a lot of fun, hope this series continues in the next years!

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I have been inactive, but the group hasn't been! We presented two posters at the great #NCMKobe26: A computational account of tactile suppression during reaching movements & Coordinated head, body & eye movements support active sensing to reduce spatial uncertainty during navigation. Back next year!

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Reposted by Constantin Rothkopf

Fabian Tatai @fatatai.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I am presenting our work this week at #NCMKobe26 @ncmsociety.bsky.social Our poster is during the Thursday/Friday session: **P2-G-182** - _A computational account of tactile suppression during reaching movements_ Dimitris Voudouris @dominikstrb.bsky.social Katja Fiehler @c-rothkopf.bsky.social

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

How do humans adapt their behavior in natural, uncertain environments? Open PhD position in the collaborative DFG Excellence Cluster “The Adaptive Mind” (theadaptivemind-excellencecluster.de) Apply: www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt...

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

New work from the lab led by @fatatai.bsky.social together with Dimitris Voudouris, @dominikstrb.bsky.social, Katja Fiehler as part of 'The Adaptive Mind' cluster

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

The Reinforcement Learning workshop at U Mannheim was a lot of fun and highly recommended if you are looking for an engaging exchange of ideas, thanks to the organizers: Leif Döring, @theo-vincent.bsky.social, @claireve.bsky.social, and Simon Weißmann! www.wim.uni-mannheim.de/doering/conf...

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

To model the perceptual process, it is first necessary to model quantitatively how the action of pouring changes the liquid level. The physics of liquids is not trivial. This work allows simulating the liquid's behaviors in pouring, a requirement for then considering perception.

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Want to model and simulate human behavior in tasks when interacting with liquids? Check out our work Niteesh Midlagajn & Constantin Rothkopf, Learning Particle Dynamics Subject to Rigid Body Manipulations Using Graph Neural Networks, presented at @logconference.bsky.social

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Zuse School ELIZA @zuseschooleliza.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Are you looking for a PhD in machine learning? 🧠 ELIZA is hiring a Doctoral Researcher at TU Darmstadt! Apply by Jan 5: www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt... ℹ️ Learn more about ELIZA: eliza.school @tuda.bsky.social, @cs-tudarmstadt.bsky.social, @ellis.eu, @daadworldwide.bsky.social #AI

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

🚀🎓We have exciting opportunities at the PhD and Postdoc level, including in the new Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience, a 10-year initiative spanning a powerful international network of labs working across species and disciplines - please reach out if interested bsky.app/profile/simo...

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Matthias Schultheis is presenting our latest work on understanding the behavior of bounded agents in more naturalistic tasks at #NeurIPS2025: What do you know? Bayesian knowledge inference for navigating agents with Jana-Sophie Schönfeld and Heinz Koeppl neurips.cc/virtual/2025...

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Tobias Niehues @tobnie.bsky.social is presenting our work with @dominikstrb.bsky.social 'Amortized Bayesian decision-making for inferring decision-making parameters from behavior' at the Amortized ProbML Workshop and the @ellis.eu UnConference. Please come by our poster!

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Reposted by Constantin Rothkopf

Kristian Kersting @kerstingaiml.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

🚀 Join @tuda.bsky.social and @hessianai.bsky.social as Professor for Ethical & Safe AI to advance the algorithmic foundations of ethical and safe AI and to shape “Reasonable AI." Apply now and make an impact where AI meets society. 👉 buff.ly/bIvq7Mb

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ProLOEWE @proloewe.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

🗞️TIP: ProLOEWE👱🏼🧑🏼‍🦰 with Kristian Kersting+Constantin @c-rothkopf.bsky.social, who bring together modern #AI + #cognitivescience➡️@tuda.bsky.social within LOEWE-WhiteBox. Who, together with their team, have succeeded in obtaining 2 clusters of #excellence with #RAI + #TAM ➡️ proloewe.de/en/proloewe-...

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Tobias Niehues @tobnie.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I'm presenting our work "Revisiting Cost Functions in Sensorimotor Decision-Making" at #CCN2025! Stop by our poster (@dominikstrb.bsky.social‬, @c-rothkopf.bsky.social‬) and learn more about how to rethink common modeling assumptions. 📅 When: Friday, August 15, 2pm–5pm 📍 Where: De Brug, Poster C1

Upper left sketch shows the problem description the paper tackles, which is the decision-making problem that the subject needs to solve versus the inverse problem about the behavioral parameters that the researcher wants to infer. Bottom left sketch shows probabilistic graphical model of the behavior as formalized in our framework. Right panel shows the results of the paper. From top to bottom it shows example data, results of the model comparison, inferred cost functions and inferred prior beliefs of the subject. Five tasks are organized in columns by which cost function described subjects' behavior in the respective task best. We found three different cost functions, None of which are quadratic.

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Fabian Tatai @fatatai.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Happy to announce that I am presenting a poster today at #CogSci25: Physical reasoning during motor learning aids people at transferring mass, but not motor control mappings. This is joint work with Dominik Ürüm, @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and @c-rothkopf.bsky.social Find out more at P3-T-192!

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Lots of trade offs in active visual behaviors, e.g. trading gaze switches for task performance www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... or trading blinking for task performance www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

pnas.org

Learning rational temporal eye movement strategies | PNAS

During active behavior humans redirect their gaze several times every second within the visual environment. Where we look within static images is h...

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Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

We have an open PhD position in an exciting @dfg.de - @ageinves.bsky.social project to further develop continuous psychophysics in collaboration with Joan-Lopez Moliner.

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Antonia Wüst @toniwuest.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Excited to share that our paper got accepted at #ICML2025!! 🎉 We challenge Vision-Language Models like OpenAI’s o1 with Bongard problems, classic visual reasoning challenges and uncover surprising shortcomings. Check out the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2410.19546 & read more below 👇

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