This institute was founded in 1992 to investigate fundamental problems in information processing such as the design of computer algorithms, the complexity of computations and computational models, automated knowledge acquisition (machine learning), the complexity of learning algorithms, pattern recognition with artificial neural networks, computational geometry, and information processing in biological neural systems. Its research integrates methods from mathematics, computer science and computational neuroscience. In education this institute is responsible for courses and seminars that introduce students of Technische Mathematik and Telematik into the basic techniques and results of theoretical computer science. In addition it offers advanced courses, seminars and applied computer projects in computational geometry, computational complexity theory, machine learning, and neural networks.