About us · A research group within LAION
Different backgrounds.
A shared curiosity about people.
Humaneness Labs is a research group within LAION. It brings together Christoph Schuhmann and Robert Kaczmarczyk — an educator and a physician, both co-founders of LAION — and AI researcher Gijs Wijngaard, working on the behavior layer for AI.
Christoph Schuhmann
Education · Open AI research
Christoph is an educator, researcher, and co-founder of LAION. He studied psychology, physics, and computer science at the University of Vienna, and trained in Method Acting at the Actors Workshop Vienna, drawing on Eric Morris and Lee Strasberg.
At LAION, he has helped build an international community around open datasets, models, and AI research, work covered in outlets including Bloomberg, Forbes, and The Washington Post.
He brings a distinctly human perspective to Humaneness Labs: a curiosity about how people learn, sustain attention, express emotion, and relate to one another.
Robert Kaczmarczyk
Medicine · Open AI research
Robert is a physician, AI researcher, and co-founder of LAION. He has been a board-certified dermatologist since March 2026. His experience spans medicine, research, and the practical work of building an open research community.
He brings broad expertise in the assessment of large language models in clinical contexts and in epidemiology, connecting the evaluation of AI systems with an understanding of clinical practice and population health.
He brings a clinical perspective to Humaneness Labs: an attention to context, uncertainty, and the subtle signals that shape communication between people.
Gijs Wijngaard
Machine listening · Open AI research
Gijs is an AI researcher exploring how machines listen, interpret sound, and connect what they hear to language. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University.
Following research at Microsoft Research, he now works within LAION at Jülich Supercomputing Centre. His work brings together audio perception, semantic reasoning, and openly shared models and datasets.
He brings a listening perspective to Humaneness Labs: building the foundation for AI that better understands the sounds and context of human interaction, where meaning often lives in tone, rhythm, and pause.
From open research to human interaction.
Humaneness Labs is a research group within LAION, the non-profit open AI research network. Our shared experience at LAION informs how we work: across disciplines, through collaboration, and with a belief that progress comes from making research accessible.
This work has earned international recognition. LAION-5B received a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award in 2022 in the Datasets and Benchmarks track. In 2023, LAION was named Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year in Science & Innovation Management.
In 2024, LAION became an Intel AI/oneAPI Center of Excellence, advancing work on open, empathetic AI for personalized education.
At Humaneness Labs, we are exploring how attention, emotion, perception, and social context can shape AI behavior. We are starting with voice, where a pause, a change in rhythm, or a moment of hesitation can transform an interaction.