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Carlotta Langer

Dr. rer. nat.
Algebraic Statistics for Biology, MPI-CBG
clanger@mpi-cbg.de


About Me

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in the Algebraic Statistics for Biology group led by Aida Maraj.

I studied Mathematics at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and I gained my PhD at the Institute for Data Science Foundations at the Hamburg University of Technology, where I worked within the DFG priority programm "The Active Self".

Research Interests

  1. Information Flows in Embodied Agents
    The interaction between body, brain and environment of an embodied agent can be modeled via the sensorimotor loop. Using information-theoretic measures allows us to quantify the information flow among the different parts of this system, including measures related to Morphological Computation and Integrated Information.

    Complexity Measures
    Complexity in itself is not easy to define. The information-geometric complexity measures I am interested in consider a system to be complex if the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This approach makes use of concepts such as stochastic processes, graphical models and conditional independence relations.

    Information-Geometric Algorithms
    The information-geometric algorithms called iterative scaling and em-algorithm can be used to approximate the maximum likelihood estimation in different settings. The latter can also be applied as a learning algorithm for embodied agents. I am interested in studying the mathematical properties of these algorithms.

Presentations

  1. How morphological computation shapes integrated information in embodied agents
    Presented at the Models of Consciousness Conference 2
    (online, 27. September 2021)
    YouTube

  2. Learning to predict requires Integrated Information
    Presented at the Models of Consciousness Conference 3
    (Stanford, 6. September 2022)
    YouTube

  3. Integrated Information in the Active Inference Framework
    Presented at the Models of Consciousness Conference 5
    (Bamberg, 4. October 2024)
    YouTube

Dissertation

  1. Information Integration in Embodied Systems.
    C. Langer
    Doctoral Thesis, 2024.
    Link

Articles

Published Journal Articles

  1. A Concise Mathematical Description of Active Inference in Discrete Time
    J. van Oostrum, C. Langer and N. Ay
    In: Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 2025.
    Link Code
  2. Outsourcing Control Rquires Control Complexity.
    C. Langer and N. Ay
    In: Artificial Life, 2024.
    Link Code
  3. Classical iterative proportional scaling of log-linear models with rational maximum likelihood estimator.
    J. I. Coons, C. Langer and M. Ruddy
    In: International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, 2024.
    Link
  4. How Morphological Computation Shapes Integrated Information in Embodied Agents
    C. Langer and N. Ay
    In: Frontiers in Psychology 12, 2021.
    Link Code
  5. Complexity as Causal Information Integration
    C. Langer and N. Ay
    In: Entropy 22, 2020.
    Link
  6. Morphological Computation: Synergy of Body and Brain
    K. Ghazi-Zahedi, C. Langer and N. Ay
    In: Entropy 19, 2017.
    Link

Published Conference Proceedings

  1. Analyzing Multimodal Integration in the Variational Autoencoder from an Information-Theoretic Perspective.
    C. Langer, Y. K. Georgie, I. Porohovoj, V.V. Hafner and N. Ay
    2025 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), Prague, Czech Republic, 2025, pp. 1-6.
    Link
  1. An Information-Theoretic Perspective on Acting Agents.
    C. Langer and N. Ay
    In: IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1321, 2024.
    Link

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