{"id":8171,"date":"2026-02-15T17:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cyber-valley.de\/?post_type=news&#038;p=8171"},"modified":"2026-03-24T20:34:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T20:34:46","slug":"2017-training-outstanding-doctoral-students-at-imprs-is-interview-with-lukas-schott","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/cyber-valley.de\/de\/news\/2017-training-outstanding-doctoral-students-at-imprs-is-interview-with-lukas-schott\/","title":{"rendered":"2017: Training outstanding doctoral students at IMPRS-IS \u2013 Interview with Lukas Schott"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><strong>In 2016, important actors from science, industry, and politics founded the Cyber\u00a0Valley Consortium, which became the first Innovation Campus in Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. Ten years on in 2026,\u00a0we&#8217;re\u00a0revisiting the most important milestones from the last decade. Each month,\u00a0we&#8217;ll\u00a0focus on a particular year since Cyber\u00a0Valley&#8217;s beginning.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This month,&nbsp;we\u2019re&nbsp;looking back to 2017 when Cyber\u00a0Valley\u2019s graduate school, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/imprs.is.mpg.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">International Max Planck Research School for Intelligent Systems (IMPRS-IS)<\/a>,&nbsp;was founded. IMPRS-IS trains outstanding doctoral students from around the world&nbsp;and&nbsp;supports them in their PhD research so they can use their AI expertise to build a better future in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lukas Schott&nbsp;is&nbsp;an&nbsp;alumnus&nbsp;of IMPRS-IS. He joined&nbsp;in 2017&nbsp;to work&nbsp;with Matthias Bethge and Wieland Brendel. His PhD project investigated how to make AI \u2018see\u2019 more robustly so&nbsp;it could&nbsp;work safely in unpredictable environments.&nbsp;Lukas previously worked at Bosch&nbsp;(a member of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyber-valley.de\/de\/pages\/corporate-network\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cyber\u00a0Valley Corporate Network<\/a>)&nbsp;and has recently started at&nbsp;Aleph Alpha&nbsp;(a member of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyber-valley.de\/en\/start-up-network\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cyber\u00a0Valley Start-up Network<\/a>)&nbsp;with the aim of&nbsp;training sovereign LLMs in Europe.&nbsp;In the following interview,&nbsp;he&nbsp;reflects&nbsp;on what&nbsp;he&nbsp;learned&nbsp;during his PhD&nbsp;and how&nbsp;his&nbsp;training at IMPRS-IS&nbsp;has&nbsp;impacted&nbsp;his career.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When you look back at your PhD, is there a moment that stands out as a defining&nbsp;highlight? What made it meaningful?&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The defining highlights were the collective &#8218;Eureka&#8216; moments within the research group.&nbsp;Uncovering the hidden mechanisms behind AI behavior and gaining a deeper understanding of&nbsp;its inner workings made the long hours&nbsp;absolutely worth it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">From your perspective, what is unique about IMPRS-IS? What distinguishes it&nbsp;from other doctoral training programs?&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I consider IMPRS-IS to be the leading AI graduate school in Germany.&nbsp;It distinguishes itself&nbsp;through an exceptional network that connects the Universities of T\u00fcbingen and Stuttgart with&nbsp;two Max Planck Institutes and leading industry partners,&nbsp;leading to exceptional AI research&nbsp;with&nbsp;high international impact.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When you joined IMPRS-IS, what were your expectations for the program and&nbsp;your PhD journey? Were there any surprises along the&nbsp;way?&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&nbsp;anticipated&nbsp;a purely academic focus, so the flexibility toward industry was a welcome surprise.&nbsp;Being able to intern at&nbsp;Google X&nbsp;[now:&nbsp;X, the Moonshot Factory]&nbsp;and Amazon&nbsp;Web&nbsp;Services&nbsp;without stalling my research was a unique advantage&nbsp;that really broadened my perspective.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">In what ways did IMPRS-IS shape your development and how do those experiences influence your work today?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It allowed me to peek behind the curtain and grasp the inner workings of AI systems.&nbsp;This&nbsp;experience refined my problem-solving skills and taught me to remain humble, always&nbsp;questioning assumptions since things often don&#8217;t work the way we think they do.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How does your work (both during your PhD and current) address real-world&nbsp;challenges and what kind of applications or long-term benefits could it have?&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My PhD&nbsp;work&nbsp;on robustness against&nbsp;corruptions&nbsp;(like rain or blur) directly addresses the safety&nbsp;of vision systems in the real world.&nbsp;My work on neural network compression solves the energy&nbsp;and hardware constraints of edge computing, allowing powerful Foundation Models to run&nbsp;locally on devices like automobiles. In my current job, we&nbsp;are&nbsp;training&nbsp;sovereign LLMs for Europe.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">IMPRS-IS is the graduate school of Cyber\u00a0Valley, a network of leading research&nbsp;institutions, industry partners,&nbsp;and&nbsp;start-ups working in AI and robotics. How has&nbsp;being part of this&nbsp;network influenced your development, whether in your&nbsp;research, skills, or career direction?&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The&nbsp;strong reputation&nbsp;of the research community in T\u00fcbingen was a&nbsp;door-opener. It gave me the&nbsp;credibility to get a foot in the door for competitive international internships, which was crucial&nbsp;for my professional growth.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">To celebrate Cyber\u00a0Valley&#8217;s ten-year anniversary,&nbsp;we&#8217;ll&nbsp;be sharing a variety of content across our website and social media channels reflecting on milestones from the last decade. Stay tuned for the next installments!&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8172,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"cv-tag":[307],"location":[],"network-role":[],"news-category":[370],"user-group":[245,247,248],"class_list":["post-8171","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cv-tag-imprs-is","news-category-10-years-cyber-valley","user-group-researcher","user-group-phd-student","user-group-public"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>2017: Training outstanding doctoral students at IMPRS-IS \u2013 Interview with Lukas Schott - Cyber Valley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cyber-valley.de\/de\/news\/2017-training-outstanding-doctoral-students-at-imprs-is-interview-with-lukas-schott\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2017: Training outstanding doctoral students at IMPRS-IS \u2013 Interview with Lukas Schott - Cyber Valley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 2016, important actors from science, industry, and politics founded the Cyber\u00a0Valley Consortium, which became the first Innovation Campus in Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg. 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