On 1st August Benedikt Ehinger took up the SimTech Tenure Track Professorship "Computational Cognitive Science" at the University of Stuttgart.
The professorship is to represent the field of Computational Cognitive Science in research and teaching, and in particular establish links between modern (data-driven) computational methods, e.g. for cognitive modeling and simulation, and applications in human-computer interaction. It is one of four new professorships and one of two tenure-track professorships to be established at the Universität Stuttgart within the Cluster of Excellence EXC 2075 "Data Integrated Simulation Science (SimTech)".
Benedikt Ehinger studied and received his doctorate in Osnabrück. From 2018 he was a postdoc under Prof. Floris de Lange in the Predictive Brain Lab at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in the Netherlands, a research institute for cognitive neuroscience. As of August 1, he will take over the tenure-track professorship Computational Cognitive Systems. His main focus is on visual cognitive science, behavioral as well as EEG and eye tracking experiments and statistical modeling.
"With Benedikt Ehinger we were able to win an excellent young scientist for the University of Stuttgart, who will enrich the research in the Cluster of Excellence SimTech especially in the project network Adaptive Simulation and Interaction", welcomes SimTech spokesperson Prof. Thomas Ertl the new tenure-track professor. "Mr. Ehinger has prevailed in an extremely competitive applicant environment and impressed both the appointment committee and the reviewers with his previous research as well as his personality. He strengthens the cognitive science expertise at the university and thus contributes to the SimTech vision of a digital human model. With his measurements of gaze behaviour and brain waves, he combines experimental approaches that generate a lot of data with statistical modelling of the underlying cognitive processes, thus exemplifying data-integrated simulation science".
The professorship will be located at the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science (SC SimTech) and will be closely linked to the Human-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Systems Department in the Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (Faculty 5) and thus to the Institute for Visualisation and Interactive Systems (VIS).