Konstantin Kirchheim

Portrait of Konstantin Kirchheim

I am a PhD student in computer science at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. My research focuses on safe and trustworthy machine learning under distribution shift, particularly out-of-distribution detection and neuro-symbolic reasoning.

I study how learned representations and structured knowledge can be combined to detect inputs and situations in which machine-learning models may behave unreliably. My work has appeared at venues including ICML, WACV, and CVPR Workshops.

I was previously a visiting graduate student at the University of Waterloo. I also maintain pytorch-ood, an open-source Python library for out-of-distribution detection with deep neural networks.

I expect to complete my PhD in late 2026 or early 2027 and am interested in postdoctoral research opportunities in trustworthy machine learning, safe perception, and neuro-symbolic methods.

Outside my main research, I occasionally work on data-mining and self-hosting projects. Some of these have developed into independent websites, including SWORM and extra-mining.

Recent Research

Out-of-Distribution Detection with Adversarial Outlier Exposure (06 Jun. 2025)
Our paper Out-of-Distribution Detection with Adversarial Outlier Exposure has been accepted at the CVPR workshop for Safe Artificial Intelligence for All Domains (SAIAD). The experiments in the paper were mostly conducted by Thomas Botschen, who is currently a master’s …
Categories: Anomaly Detection
Tagged with: CVPR · Generative Models · Anomaly Detection
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Improving Out-of-Distribution Detection with Markov Logic Networks (06 Jun. 2025)
Our paper Improving Out-of-Distribution Detection with Markov Logic Networks has been accepted at ICML. In it, we propose a probabilistic extension of Out-of-Distribution Detection with Logical Reasoning, as well as a simple algorithm to mine logical constraints for OOD detection …
Categories: Neuro-Symbolic
Tagged with: ICML · Neuro-Symbolic · Anomaly Detection
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Language Models as Reasoners for Out-of-Distribution Detection (17 Sep. 2024)
Our paper, Language Models as Reasoners for Out-of-Distribution Detection, was presented at the Workshop on AI Safety Engineering (WAISE) 2024 and received the best paper award by popular vote. It constitutes an extension of our idea of Out-of-Distribution Detection with Logical …
Categories: Anomaly Detection Neuro-Symbolic
Tagged with: SafeComp · Anomaly Detection · LLM · Neuro-Symbolic
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Out-of-Distribution Detection with Logical Reasoning (04 Jan. 2024)
Our paper Out-of-Distribution Detection with Logical Reasoning has been accepted at WACV 2024. Abstract § Machine Learning models often only generalize reliably to samples from the training distribution. Consequentially, detecting when input data is out-of-distribution (OOD) is …
Categories: Anomaly Detection Neuro-Symbolic
Tagged with: WACV · Anomaly Detection · Neuro-Symbolic
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Recent Writing and Projects

Deutschlandfunk-Interview: Sicherer KI-Einsatz im Bahnbetrieb (13 Dec. 2025) 🇩🇪
In December 2025, I spoke with Manfred Kloiber on Deutschlandfunk’s Computer und Kommunikation about the safe use of artificial intelligence in railway operations. The discussion covered the conditions under which machine-learning systems can be deployed in safety-critical …
Categories: Machine Learning
Tagged with: Anomaly Detection · Autonomous Vehicles
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Invited Talk: Knowledge Discovery in Large Datasets using LLMs (24 Mar. 2025) 🇩🇪
I was invited to give a talk on the topic “Knowledge Discovery in Large Datasets using LLMs” at the 2nd Conference on Impact and Social Work. In the presentation, I made the case that current LLMs, like ChatGPT, allow people with limited background in programming to …
Categories: Data Mining
Tagged with: Data Mining · Social Work
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On the Implementation of AI Ethics (24 Feb. 2025) 🇩🇪
This is a (German) term paper that I wrote in 2019 (in a pre-LLM era) for a seminar on the philosophical aspects of AI. It discusses general strategies for implementing ethical behavior in AI systems at the example of autonomous vehicles. While somewhat outdated, it still …
Categories: Philosophy
Tagged with: Ethics · Autonomous Vehicles
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