Institute's history

1990

Max Planck Society strengthens the Computer Sciences by founding of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the first institute of the Max Planck Society entirely devoted to computer sciences. Founding directors are Kurt Mehlhorn and Harald Ganzinger, heading the first two departments “Algorithms and Complexity” and “Programming Logics” respectively.

1996

Move into the new building

1999

Hans-Peter Seidel is appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society; he joines MPI-INF as director heading the third department “Computer Graphics”.

2000

Founding of the International Max Planck School for Computer Science; This collaboration between MPI-INF and Saarland University is devoted to the support of young scientists.

2001

Thomas Lengauer is appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society; he joines MPI-INF as director heading the fourth department “Bioinformatics”.

2003

Gerhard Weikum is appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society; he joines MPI-INF as director heading the fifth department “Databases and Information Systems”.

A cooperation between Max Planck Society and Stanford University is established to support young computer scientists in their careers: the Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication.

2004

Our sister institute, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems is founded with sites in Kaiserslautern and Saarbrücken.

Harald Ganzinger passes away.

2007

As part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative, Saarbrücken wins the Cluster of Excellence “Multimodal Computing and Communication”. MPI-INF is one of the core partners.

2010

Bernt Schiele is appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society; he joines MPI-INF as director heading the fifth department “Computer Vision and Multimodal Computing”.

2012

Renewal of the Cluster of Excellence “Multimodal Computing and Communication”.

2015

25th anniversary