
Berkant Turan
I am working on improving the interpretability of AI, focusing on the Merlin-Arthur Classifier. This intriguing model uses two feature selectors to generate meaningful saliency maps. My objectives are to fine-tune its architecture, explore its adversarial components, and evaluate its effectiveness with complex datasets.
📬 Contact
- office
- Room 3024 at ZIB
- turan (at) zib.de
- homepage
- b-turan.github.io
- languages
- German, English, and Turkish
🎓 Curriculum vitae
- since 2023
- Member of BMS
- since 2022
- Researcher at ZIB
- 2022
- Research Assistant at ZIB
- May 2022
- M.Sc. in Scientific Computing at TUB
- Oct 2018
- B.Sc. in Engineering Science at TUB
📝 Publications and preprints
Conference proceedings
- Głuch, G., Turan, B., Nagarajan, S. G., and Pokutta, S. (2025). The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Watermarks, Transferable Attacks and Adversarial Defenses. Proceedings of the ICLR Workshop on GenAI Watermarking.
[arXiv]
[BibTeX]
@inproceedings{2024_GrzegorzTuranNagarajanPokutta_Watermarksadversarialdefenses, year = {2025}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ICLR Workshop on GenAI Watermarking}, archiveprefix = {arXiv}, eprint = {2410.08864}, primaryclass = {cs.LG}, author = {Głuch, Grzegorz and Turan, Berkant and Nagarajan, Sai Ganesh and Pokutta, Sebastian}, title = {The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Watermarks, Transferable Attacks and Adversarial Defenses} }
- Pauls, J., Zimmer, M., Turan, B., Saatchi, S., Ciais, P., Pokutta, S., and Gieseke, F. (2025, January 31). Capturing Temporal Dynamics in Large-Scale Canopy Tree Height Estimation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning.
[arXiv]
[BibTeX]
@inproceedings{2025_JanEtAl_Temporalcanopyheight, year = {2025}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning}, archiveprefix = {arXiv}, eprint = {2501.19328}, primaryclass = {cs.LG}, author = {Pauls, Jan and Zimmer, Max and Turan, Berkant and Saatchi, Sassan and Ciais, Philippe and Pokutta, Sebastian and Gieseke, Fabian}, title = {Capturing Temporal Dynamics in Large-Scale Canopy Tree Height Estimation}, date = {2025-01-31} }
- Turan, B., Asadulla, S., Steinmann, D., Stammer, W., and Pokutta, S. (2025, July 10). Neural Concept Verifier: Scaling Prover-Verifier Games Via Concept Encodings. Proceedings of the ICML Workshop on Actionable Interpretability.
[arXiv]
[BibTeX]
@inproceedings{2025_TuranEtAl_Neuralconceptverifier_2507-07532, year = {2025}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the ICML Workshop on Actionable Interpretability}, archiveprefix = {arXiv}, eprint = {2507.07532}, primaryclass = {cs.LG}, author = {Turan, Berkant and Asadulla, Suhrab and Steinmann, David and Stammer, Wolfgang and Pokutta, Sebastian}, title = {Neural Concept Verifier: Scaling Prover-Verifier Games Via Concept Encodings}, date = {2025-07-10} }
- Wäldchen, S., Sharma, K., Turan, B., Zimmer, M., and Pokutta, S. (2024). Interpretability Guarantees with Merlin-Arthur Classifiers. Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics.
[arXiv]
[BibTeX]
@inproceedings{2022_WaeldchenEtAl_Interpretabilityguarantees, year = {2024}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics}, archiveprefix = {arXiv}, eprint = {2206.00759}, primaryclass = {cs.LG}, author = {Wäldchen, Stephan and Sharma, Kartikey and Turan, Berkant and Zimmer, Max and Pokutta, Sebastian}, title = {Interpretability Guarantees with Merlin-Arthur Classifiers} }
🔬 Projects
Preserving global vegetation is crucial for addressing and mitigating climate change. Accurate, up-to-date forest health data is essential. AI4Forest aims to develop advanced AI methods to monitor forests using satellite imagery, including radar and optical data. The project will create scalable techniques for detailed, high-resolution maps of the globe, e.g., to monitor canopy height, biomass, and to track forest disturbances. Please also visit the project website at ai4forest.eu.
Existing approaches for interpreting Neural Network classifiers that highlight features relevant for a decision are based solely on heuristics. We introduce a theory that allows us to bound the quality of the features without assumptions on the classifier model by relating classification to Interactive Proof Systems.
đź’¬ Talks and posters
Research seminar talks
- Oct 2024
- Interpretability Guarantees with Merlin-Arthur Classifiers
Research Seminar of the Machine Learning and Data Engineering Group at WWU, MĂĽnster
Poster presentations
- Jul 2025
- Neural Concept Verifier: Scaling Prover-Verifier Games Via Concept Encodings
Workshop on Actionable Interpretability @ ICML 2025, Vancouver - Jul 2025
- Capturing Temporal Dynamics in Large-Scale Canopy Tree Height Estimation
42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Vancouver - May 2025
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Watermarks, Transferable Attacks and Adversarial Defenses
7th DOxML Conference, Kyoto - Apr 2025
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Watermarks, Transferable Attacks and Adversarial Defenses
Workshop on GenAI Watermarking @ ICLR 2025, Singapore - Jul 2024
- Unified Taxonomy in AI Safety: Watermarks, Adversarial Defenses, and Transferable Attacks
Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Foundation Models (TF2M) @ ICML 2024, Vienna - May 2024
- Interpretability Guarantees with Merlin-Arthur Classifiers
27th AISTATS Conference, València - Jul 2023
- Extending Merlin-Arthur Classifiers for Improved Interpretability
The 1st World Conference on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence
đź“… Event Attendance
- Jul 2025
- 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Vancouver
- May 2025
- 7th DOxML Conference, Kyoto
- May 2025
- 28th AISTATS Conference, Phuket
- Apr 2025
- 13th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Singapore
- Jul 2024
- 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Vienna
- May 2024
- 27th AISTATS Conference, València
- Sep 2023
- 5th Computational Optimization at Work (CO@Work), Berlin
👨‍🏫 Teaching
- winter 2019
- Tutor for Statics and Elementary Strength of Materials at TUB
- summer 2018
- Tutor for Energy-Based Methods in Mechanics at TUB
- summer 2018
- Tutor for Continuum Mechanics at TUB
- winter 2018
- Tutor for Kinematics and Dynamics at TUB
- summer 2017
- Tutor for Statics and Elementary Strength of Materials at TUB
- winter 2017
- Tutor for Energy-Based Methods in Mechanics at TUB
- winter 2017
- Tutor for Continuum Mechanics at TUB
- summer 2016
- Tutor for Kinematics and Dynamics at TUB
- summer 2015
- Tutor for Statics and Elementary Strength of Materials at TUB
📝 Organization and outreach
- Jul 2025
- Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften at Zuse Institute Berlin
- Jun 2024
- Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften at Zuse Institute Berlin
- 2024
- Support in the organization of ZIB40 events
- Jun 2023
- Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften at Zuse Insittute Berlin