The Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health improves early diagnosis of diseases of the nervous system and their prevention with the help of artificial intelligence.

About Hertie AI

Hertie AI builds on the latest advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence to better understand the healthy and diseased nervous system and to develop new methods to help detect its diseases earlier, predict disease progression and treat diseases in a more targeted manner. To this end, large multimodal data sets are used – such datasets have become available in recent years both in basic research and from everyday clinical practice. To fully exploit its potential, the institute leads methodological innovations that meet the special requirements placed on clinical AI methods - in terms of their accuracy, robustness and interpretability. In close collaboration with clinical partners in neurology and ophthalmology, Hertie AI will test the developed methods in clinical use.

Hertie AI is embedded in a unique network of research initiatives in neuroscience and artificial intelligence in Tübingen near Stuttgart. We work closely with CyberValley, the largest research network in artificial intelligence in Europe, the Tübingen AI Center, one of Germany's AI competence centers, and the Excellence Cluster “Machine Learning - New Perspectives for Science”.

To fulfill its ambitious mission, the three research Departments are structured around supporting Central Structures.  All entities work collaboratively to support and advance the institute's research objectives. 

Leadership

Portrait of Philipp Berens from Hertie AI

Prof. Dr. Philipp Berens

Philipp Berens is Director of the Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health and Full Professor of Data Science at the University of Tübingen. He is…

Dr. Christina Bürger

Christina Bürger, with extensive experience in science management, has joined Hertie AI as the Managing Director. Having worked in various research…

Prof. Dr. Kerstin Ritter

Prof. Dr. Kerstin Ritter is a Full Professor of Machine Learning for Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Tübingen and is a Director at the…

Central Office

Chiu Yi Lam

Chiu Yi Lam has extensive working experience in international settings and diverse roles in administration, project management and…

Sabrina Rehbaum

Sabrina‘s focus is on the structured coordination of administrative processes, efficient support of workflows, and ensuring smooth day-to-day…

Team

Portrait of Jonas Beck, Hertie AI

Jonas Beck

Jonas Beck is interested in probabilistic inference in mechanistic models of neuroscience. More specifically, he applies probabilistic numerical…
Portrait of Sebastian Damrich from Hertie AI

Dr. Sebastian Damrich

Sebastian Damrich is an Early Career Research Group Leader at the Hertie AI, where he develops and analyses machine learning models for neuroscience…
Portrait of Kerol Djoumessi from Hertie AI

Kerol Djoumessi

Kerol Djoumessi designs deep learning models for medical image analysis that are interpretable by design, with applications in ophthalmology. He is a…

Dr. Simone Ebert

Simone Ebert studies how inhibition shapes early visual processing in the retina. She is a PostDoc in the Department of Data Science. Before joining…

Dr. Lydia Federmann

Lydia’s research aims to improve our understanding of cognitive and neuropsychological functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. She is…

Shreyash Garg

Shreyash is interested in understanding psychiatric disorders by leveraging machine learning methods to integrate data from various modalities. These…
Portrait of Julius Gervelmeyer from Hertie AI

Julius Gervelmeyer

Julius Gervelmeyer uses machine learning to investigate the time-course of Age-related Macular Degeneration. He is a PhD student and a scholar of the…

Dr. Sam Gijsen

My work focuses on applying machine learning to advance understanding and prediction in medical neuroscience and psychiatry. To do so, I am…
Portrait of Rita González Márquez from Hertie AI

Rita González Márquez

Rita González Márquez uses machine learning to learn meaningful representations of text data, and to explore what makes a representation good in the…

Erik Großkopf

Erik is a PhD student at the Hertie AI Institute. Driven by technological advancement, he focuses on applying machine learning and computer vision to…

Verena Jasmin Hallitschke

Verena Hallitschke is interested in advancing language-based interactions with medical images, as it is the most intuitive form of communication. She…
Portrait of Huang Ziwei, Hertie AI

Dr. Ziwei Huang

Ziwei Huang is a scientific software developer at the Hertie AI. Previously, he studied psychology in China and neuroscience in Norway and Germany. He…
Portrait of Kyra Kadhim from Hertie AI

Kyra Kadhim

Kyra Kadhim studies how the brain processes visual information, starting from the very first synapses in the retina. In the past, she worked on…

Dr. Florian Kofler

Florian Kofler is an Early Career Research Group Leader at the Hertie AI. He is an interdisciplinary scientist driven by a passion for advancing…

Serli Kopar

Serli is a PhD student at the Hertie AI and an IMPRS-IS scholar, driven by a passion for making healthcare more accessible and human-centered. Her…
Portrait of Jan Lause from Hertie AI

Dr. Jan Lause

Jan Lause works on neural computations in the retina, especially how the enigmatic group of amacrine cells shapes the signals that the retina sends to…

Marina Lex

Marina is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and associated with the Department…
Portrait of Samuel Ofosu Mensah from Hertie AI

Dr. Samuel Ofosu Mensah

Samuel Ofosu Mensah develops deep learning models for medical images, with a focus on disease detection in retina images and federated learning. He is…
Portrait of Sarah Müller from Hertie AI

Sarah Müller

Sarah is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Data Science at the Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health at the University of Tübingen, an IMPRS-IS…

Nicolas Münster

Nicolas has received both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Medical Engineering from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, with a…

Stella Namuganza

Stella Namuganza is committed to fostering the development of ethically sound digital health technologies that uphold human value and human rights.…

Dr. Trang-Anh Estelle Nghiem

My research aims to apply computational cognitive neuroscience, neuro-AI, and biophysics to psychiatry. Trained in physics at Cambridge, I became…
Portrait of Ifeoma Veronica Nwabufo from Hertie AI

Ifeoma Veronica Nwabufo

Ifeoma Nwabufo uses machine learning to solve problems in health, currently exploring self-supervised methods for embedding medical images. She is a…

Dr. Jonathan Oesterle

Jonathan Oesterle studies the signal processing of the inner retina, with a focus on regional differences that may reflect task-specific adaptations.…

Roshan Rane

Roshan’s Ph.D. research lies at the crossroads of computer science and mental health research. He analyses large population neuroscience databases…

Camila Roa

Camila Roa uses self-supervised learning to build representation spaces for retinal image datasets, and then visualises them in 2D using neighbor…

Dr. Lisa Schmors

Lisa Schmors is interested in the potential synergies between neuroscience and machine learning (NeuroAI). She received her Ph.D. from the University…

Dr. Marc-André Schulz

Marc-André Schulz is a group leader in the Department of Machine Learning at the Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health at the University of…

Fabio Seel

Fabio Seel asks whether the retina follows an efficient coding strategy, whether the importance of a stimulus shapes our vision, and how the natural…

Moritz Seiler

Moritz Seiler holds a degree in Business Administration (B.Sc.) from the University of Bayreuth and in Statistics (B.Sc.) from the Ludwig Maximilian…

Nys Tjade Siegel

Tjade is a dedicated researcher specializing in the application of advanced deep learning models to structural brain MRI data. With a robust…
Portrait of Sacha Sokoloski from Hertie AI

Dr. Sacha Sokoloski

Dr. Sacha Sokoloski is a group leader for Neuronal Modeling in the Department of Data Science at the Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health at the…

Dr. Didem Stark

Didem Stark is interested in understanding bias and fairness in machine learning models used for clinical neuroimaging data. Using various fairness…

Harini Sudha J G

Harini Sudha uses Deep Learning to uncover fundamental principles of retinal perception across species. She is a PhD researcher at the Hertie AI and a…

Aleksejs Timčenko

Alex Timčenko decodes visual stimuli from brain data by following the latent neural trajectories of cell populations. He is a PhD student at Hertie AI…

Marija Tochadse

Marija focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to treatment outcome in psychotherapy. For this, she uses structural and functional MRI…

Xiaojun Zhou

Xiaojun is a PhD student in the research group of AI for Brain Simulation in Psychiatry at the Hertie AI. He focuses on developing personalized models…

Alumni