About Me

Dr. Marcel Binz is a research scientist and deputy head of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Helmholtz Munich.
His research employs state-of-the-art machine learning methods to uncover the fundamental principles behind human cognition, and — in turn — translate that understanding into better aligned AI systems. He believes that to get a full understanding of the human mind, it is vital to consider it as a whole and not just as the sum of its parts. His current research goal is therefore to establish foundation models of human cognition — models that cannot only simulate, predict, and explain human behavior in a single domain but that offer a unified take on our mind.

Key Publications

Binz, M., Akata, E., Bethge, M., Brändle, F., Callaway, F., Coda-Forno, J., ... & Schulz, E. (in press). Centaur: a foundation model of human cognition. Nature.
More information on the project webpage.

Binz, M., & Schulz, E. (2023). Using cognitive psychology to understand GPT-3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Binz, M., Alaniz, S., Roskies, A., Aczel, B., Bergstrom, C. T., Allen, C., ... & Schulz, E. (2025). How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Binz, M., Dasgupta, I., Jagadish, A., Botvinick, M., Wang, J.X., & Schulz, E. (2024). Meta-Learned Models of Cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Binz, M., & Schulz, E. (2024). Turning large language models into cognitive models. International Conference on Learning Representations.