17.11.2026
11:15 AM - 12:15 PM | ELLIS AI in Life Seminar Series Heidelberg:
Foundation Models for the Data we Actually Have in Medicine: TabPFN and Beyond
Frank Hutter
Most data in cancer research is tabular: patient records, biomarker panels, clinical trial results, and features derived from omics. For decades, gradient-boosted trees have dominated this domain, and deep learning has struggled, especially in the small-sample regime typical of clinical studies. TabPFN is a tabular foundation model that changes this picture. Pre-trained on millions of synthetic datasets, it performs in-context learning: given a new dataset, it yields well-calibrated predictions in seconds, without hyperparameter tuning, and natively handles missing values, outliers, and mixed data types. In this talk, I will explain the ideas behind TabPFN, our Nature 2025 paper, and the fast-paced developments since then. TabPFN has already been used in hundreds of medical prediction use cases, and we are keen to work with partners to identify & solve the hardest challenges of tabular predictions whose solutions would bring the greatest benefit to society.
| Oliver Stegle
Moritz Gerstung | Kommunikationszentrum (KoZ) des DKFZ
and via Stream
Zoom-Link:
https://dkfz-de.zoom.us/meeting/register/mvbrjkzxSfyE8wurevnCAg#/registration | |
20.11.2027
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM | Compact Course: Prompting and Evaluating Multimodal AI Models with AMMICO
Instructor: PD Dr. Delia Dumitrescu, Political Sciences, IPW / Dr. Inga Ulusoy, Research Software Engineer, Scientific Software Center
Prerequisites
Participants should have basic familiarity with handling structured data such as CSV files. In addition, basic familiarity with Python and Jupyter notebooks, as well as with generative AI and large language models, is useful but not required. Participants are required to bring their own laptops to work on during the course. They need to have a registered ORCID account to be able to use the Jupyter4NFDI service.
Summary
Multimodal AI models can analyze text, images, video, and combinations thereof, enabling researchers to extract structured information from increasingly large and heterogeneous datasets. However, the results of these models depend strongly on the selected model and model parameters, the dataset, and - particularly - the way a task is formulated through prompts.
In this hands-on course, participants will use AMMICO, an open-source Python package for AI-based media and content analysis, to systematically explore these factors. We will apply vision-language and audio models to different datasets and compare different model backends for tasks such as content description, feature extraction, and visual question answering.
A particular focus will be on prompt design. Participants will experiment with different ways of formulating the same research question and investigate how prompt specificity, context, output constraints, and examples influence model responses. We will develop prompts iteratively and discuss strategies for obtaining more consistent, interpretable, and reusable results.
The course will discuss practical approaches for evaluating outputs and documenting model and prompt configurations to make AI-assisted analyses more transparent and reproducible.
| Scientific Software Center | Mathematikon Bauteil A, Im Neuenheimer Feld 205, seminar room 12 on the 5th floor | |
| HITS Symposium
“Future of Sustainable Computing”
Due to the advent of AI and the steadily growing number of data centers, computation accounts for a continuously increasing fraction of the global electricity, water, and natural resource consumption.
Join us for the “Future of Sustainable Computing Symposium” at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) to explore and discuss the future of sustainable computing research ranging from low-level hardware measures over sustainable AI to policy related approaches. The symposium features a panel of early career as well as established researchers in the broader area of sustainable computing from around the world
Registration for the event is now open. | | Studio Villa Bosch Heidelberg,
Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg 33, 69118 Heidelberg | |
09.12.2026
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | ELLIS AI in Life Seminar Series Heidelberg:
Nationwide disease prediction from electronic health records and genetics
Andrea Ganna
The talk will present recent advances in disease prediction through the integration of nationwide health data and genomic information. It will describe a foundation model trained on Finnish nationwide health data, covering more than 7 million individuals and 3 billion health events, to model and predict health trajectories. The talk will examine the current strengths and limitations of this approach, including challenges related to fairness and generalizability. It will then show how polygenic scores complement electronic-health-record-based prediction, with the two approaches providing distinct strengths across disease domains. Finally, the talk will discuss how integrating genomic and EHR data can improve trial emulation, strengthen causal inference, and improve biomarker discovery. | | Kommunikationszentrum (KoZ) des DKFZ and via Stream Zoom-Link: https://dkfz-de.zoom.us/meeting/register/e6USSBqVQxO4ZH1ZmZe1WA#/registration | |
| EMBO | EMBL Symposium 'AI and biology'
We are writing to inform you that the open call for workshop and tutorial organizers for next year’s EMBO | EMBL Symposium 'AI and biology' (11–14 May 2027, EMBL Heidelberg) is now open.
For the first time, the symposium will have a dedicated day, 11 May, entirely to on-site workshops and tutorials, running alongside the main programme on the following days. We are inviting proposals from academia and industry for:
- Workshops: collaborative sessions focused on problem-solving, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation
- Tutorials: expert-led sessions offering hands-on introductions to key AI methods, tools, or cross-cutting skills
Full guidelines for organizers, including selection criteria and the application form, can be found https://www.embl.org/about/info/course-and-conference-office/events/ees27-12/#vf-tabs__section-workshops-and-tutorials.
If you are interested in organizing a session, or know colleagues or collaborators who might be, we would be delighted to receive your proposal. We would also be very grateful if you could help spread the word within your own networks and communities. Workshop and tutorial organizers receive free registration for the main conference!
The application deadline is on 16 November 2026.
Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions.
| Organisers:
Mor Nitzan
(The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Fabio Petroni
(EMBL Rome, Italy)
Oliver Stegle
(EMBL Heidelberg, Germany) | EMBL Advanced Training Centre | |
