ELLIS Summer Lecture Series - Explainability & Understanding of Models

Start: Jun 1, 2026
End: Jul 8, 2026
Speaker: Hila Chefer, Margret Keuper, Simone Schaub-Meyer
Location: Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Inselplatz 5
Room: Letcure Hall, Room 005
Host: ELLIS Unit Jena
Contact: conrad.philipp@uni-jena.de

The ELLIS Summer Lecture Series on “Explainability & Understanding of Models” brings together leading researchers to explore one of the most pressing challenges in modern AI: making complex machine learning systems transparent, interpretable, and trustworthy.The lecture series is supported by the Professorinnenprogramm 2030 funded by the German federal and state governments as well as by the “Women in ELLIS” initiative.

As models grow in scale and impact, understanding how and why they make decisions becomes essential for scientific progress, real-world deployment, and societal acceptance. This lecture series offers cutting-edge insights into methods for explaining model behavior, uncovering internal representations, and bridging the gap between performance and interpretability—providing a platform for discussion, learning, and collaboration across the ELLIS community and beyond.

Schedule:

June 1, 2026, 14:00 – 16:00

Dr. Hila Chefer, Tel Aviv University: Toward Generative Models that Understand the Visual World

June 24, 2026, 16:00 – 18:00

Margret Keuper, University of Mannheim, Max Planck Institute for lnformatics: Reliablility in Computer Vision – Trade-Offs between Robustness, Fairness and Transparency

July 8, 2026, 16:00 – 18:00

Simone Schaub-Meyer, Technical University of Darmstadt: Understanding Deep Vision Models and Its Benefits