1. Data assimilation - the collaborative research centre SFB1294
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Honorary Colloquium for Manfred Opper

BIFOLD Berlin14:00–19:00

After being a principal investigator of SFB 1294 over two funding periods, we would like to honour Manfred Opper's (Professor Emeritus at TU Berlin) outstanding scientific career and long-standing contributions to our community. We are therefore very pleased to invite you to an Honorary Colloquium in recognition of Manfred’s work, his ideas, and his lasting impact as a researcher, colleague, and mentor. It is a joint festivity of the SFB 1294 at University of Potsdam, TU Berlin and the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD).

As seats at our venue are limited, we ask you to register for the celebration as soon as possible. Here is the registration form.

 

The colloquium will take place on: 

Date: Friday, 12 June, 2026
Time: 2:00–7:00 pm
Venue: BIFOLD Franklinstr.28/29, 10587 Berlin, 7th floor

 

The colloquium is intended as both a scientific event and a festive gesture of appreciation. In addition to highlighting Manfred’s broad and influential scientific achievements, we would also like to acknowledge his decisive role in shaping our SFB, which would be difficult to imagine in its current form without Manfred’s commitment, vision, and guidance. On this occasion, we will also award Manfred an honorary membership of the SFB in recognition of his contributions.

Programme:

  • 14:00 Uhr Introduction
    Prof. Sebastian Reich, Universität Potsdam, and Prof. Klaus-Robert Müller, BIFOLD Co-Direktor / TU Berlin
  • 14:15 Uhr Keynote 
    Prof. Guido Sanguinetti, Professor of Applied Physics and Data Science, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) Trieste, Italy
    "Correlated multimodal generative learning"
  • 14:45 Uhr Keynote
    Prof. Ron Meir, Technion, Israel Institue of Technology
    "Learning and Forgetting in Continual Learning"
  • 15:15 - 15:45 Uhr Coffee Break
  • 15:45 Uhr Keynote
    Prof. Reimer Kühn, Emeritus Professor of Statistical Physics in the Department of Mathematics, King's College London
    "Schrödinger Operators Defined on Graphs with Correlated Random Potentials"
  • 16:15 Uhr Keynote
    Prof. Ole Winther, DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen
    "Some of the things we found in Manfred's drawer"
  • 16:45 Uhr Conclusion
    Prof. Manfred Opper, Professor Emeritus TU Berlin
  • 17:00 Uhr Reception

We are very much looking forward to celebrating this special occasion together.