On September 8–9, more than 150 members of ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig came together for the 2nd General Assembly 2025 in Leipzig. The two-day program included interesting talks, interactive workshops and breakout sessions. Furthermore, it offered time and room for exchange and collaboration.

Presentations and Keynote on Trustworthy AI

The meeting started with an overview by director Prof. Erhard Rahm in his last General Assembly as director on the development and perspectives of the center. He outlined the achieved successes of ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig starting from a Big Data center in 2014 to become an institutional national AI competence center in 2022 with a funding size equivalent to a center of excellence for each of the two universities. Remarkable successes include the introduction of several new AI professorships and junior research groups as well as a graduate school with a high scientific quality resulting in a strongly increasing number of publications and completed PhDs.

Furthermore, ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig is built on a strong infrastructure with physical centers and high performance computing  facilities and very active living labs in both Leipzig and Dresden. Prof. Rahm thanked all members of the center for their dedicated work, especially the management team and Prof. Wolfgang E. Nagel (codirector, Dresden) and Dr. Eric Peukert (management director, Leipzig). In addition, he acknowledged the generous funding, especially the support of Saxony for the monetary funding and the provision of excellent working conditions.

Afterwards, short talks from researchers covering a broad field of topics followed. The talks offered insights into recent research and results as well as into upcoming projects. After lunch, the invited guest speaker Prof. Ute Schmidt (Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg) held an insightful keynote on “Trustworthy AI: Reliable, Explainable, Revisable”.

Best PhD Poster Award

The afternoon concluded with an award ceremony following the PhD poster session. This was the 2nd edition of the “Best PhD Poster Award”, which first was awarded in the last year. Again, all the attendees of the General Assembly had one vote to give to their favorized poster. A second awardee was chosen by a jury consisting of an equal number of postdocs from both locations of ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig. The best poster chosen by the whole GA audience was “Smart Slide Generation: Re-Using Training Materials Through the Power of LLMs” by Lea Gihlein and Lea Kabjesz. The postdoc jury chose the poster “The Semantic Privacy Risk in Human Mobility Data” by Maja Schneider as their favorite. Congratulations to the winners of the Best PhD Poster Award!

Farewell to Prof. Rahm

The first day ended with a farewell to Prof. Erhard Rahm, who had been director of the center for more than ten years. He received a symbolic “primary key” for ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig, where he will always be welcome and find open doors. In addition, the present members of the management board bid farewell with words of appreciation.

Workshops at the General Assembly

On the second day, various workshops took place simultaniously, offering a wide range of subjects and covering topics such as Enzyme Design, Educational Technology, Science Communication and Coding with AI. There was also a World Café on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

The General Assembly in Leipzig has once again demonstrated how important and productive it is to meet regularly in person with the whole team. We are already looking forward to meeting again in Dresden at the end of the year.