Biography

Martin's research focuses on a computational understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying natural intelligence in vision and language. To achieve this goal, he bridges Deep Learning, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Science, building artificial neural network models that match the brain’s neural representations in their internal processing and are aligned to human behavior in their outputs.

He completed his PhD at the MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences department advised by Jim DiCarlo with collaborations with Ev Fedorenko and Josh Tenenbaum, following Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in computer science at TUM, LMU, and UNA. His previous work includes research in human-like vision at Harvard with Gabriel Kreiman, natural language processing reinforcement learning at Salesforce with Richard Socher, as well as several other projects in industry. Martin also co-founded two startups. Among others, his work has been recognized in the news at Science magazine, MIT News, and Scientific American.

Martin's work has been published at top journals including PNAS, Neuron, and Nature Human Behavior as well as leading machine learning venues such as NeurIPS and ICLR where his papers are routinely selected for Oral and Spotlight presentations (0.5% acceptance rate). He has received numerous awards and honors for his research, including the Neuro-Irv and Helga Cooper Open Science Prize, the McGovern fellowship, the Walle Nauta Award for Continuing Dedication in Teaching, the Takeda fellowship in AI Health, the German Federal scholarship, and the MIT Singleton and Shoemaker fellowships. With his startup Integreat, he was a finalist in the Google.org Impact Challenge and won the TUM Social Impact Award, and the Council of Europe's Youth Award.