Zeynep Akata is a Liesel Beckmann Distinguished professor of computer science at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; ) is a public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Established in 1868 by King Ludwig II ...

where she leads the Interpretable and Reliable Machine Learning chair. Akata is also the director of the Helmholtz Institute for Explainable Machine Learning.

Education and career

Akata received her undergraduate degree in

Trakya University Trakya University () is a public university in Edirne, Turkey. It was established on July 20, 1982. The university is located in Edirne, in Eastern Thrace. Trakya University is a regional university with branches and campuses spread over the T ...

in Turkey, her MSc from RWTH Aachen and Ph.D. in computer science at the

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name French Institute for Research in Comp ...

Grenoble Grenoble ( ; ; or ; or ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of the Isère Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regions of France, region ...

-Rhônes-Alpes. She was a post-doctoral research fellow at the

Max Planck Institute for Informatics The Max Planck Institute for Informatics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik'', abbreviated ''MPI-INF'' or ''MPII'') is a research institute in computer science with a focus on algorithms and their applications in a broad sense. It host ...

with

Bernt Schiele Bernt Schiele (born November 3, 1968, in Neustadt) is a German computer scientist. He is Max Planck Director at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and professor at Saarland University. He is known for his work in the field of computer visi ...

and at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

with Trevor Darrell. Akata was an assistant professor at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

from 2017 to 2019 and she was a full professor at the Cluster of Excellence Machine Learning at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (; ), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The University of Tübingen is one of eleven German Excellenc ...

between 2019 and 2023. While in Tübingen, Akata was also a senior research scientist at the

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Founded on 18 March 2011, the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) is one of the 86 research institutes of the Max Planck Society. With locations in Stuttgart and Tübingen, it combines interdisciplinary research in the growing f ...

Tübingen Tübingen (; ) is a traditional college town, university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer (Neckar), Ammer rivers. about one in ...

Research

Akata's research interests focus on Explainable Multimodal Machine Learning which is in the intersection between Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing.

Selected awards and honours

* 2023 Alfried Krupp Prize * 2022 ECVA Young Researcher Award * 2021 German Pattern Recognition Award * 2019 ERC Starting Grant * 2019 Young Scientist Honour from the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring foundation * 2014 Lise-Meitner Award for Excellent Women in Computer Science from the Max Planck Society

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Akata, Zeynep Computer vision researchers Living people Turkish scientists Year of birth missing (living people)