Wolfgang Wahlster

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolfgang Wahlster (2012)

Wolfgang Wahlster (born February 2, 1953 in Saarbrücken ) is a German computer scientist and university professor . Wahlster held a chair for computer science at Saarland University between 1982 and December 2018 and was director and CEO of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), founded in 1988, from 1997 to January 2019 .

life and career

Wolfgang Wahlster passed the Abitur in 1972 at the Max-Planck-Gymnasium in Delmenhorster . He graduated from the University of Hamburg with a degree in computer science and theoretical linguistics sponsored by the German National Academic Foundation in 1977 with a diploma in computer science. 1981 Wahlster at was Wilfried Brauer with a summa cum laude rated work "theory, design and implementation of an explanation component for approximate inference in natural language dialogue systems" to Dr. rer. nat. PhD.

Since 1978 Wahlster has been a research assistant and head of research projects on speech dialogue systems in Walther von Hahn's Hamburg work group . In 1982, the native of Saarbrücken accepted the appointment of a C3 professorship for computer science at the Saarland University , which was upgraded to a C4 professorship in 1984 after the rejection of two appointments to the Technical University of Karlsruhe and the University of Hamburg. Between 1985 and his retirement, Wahlster held a W3 professorship for computer science with a chair for artificial intelligence at Saarland University.

One of his main focuses is cognitive assistance systems. In addition to his teaching and research activities, he was chairman of the management board and technical-scientific director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH - DFKI .

Wahlster has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien ) since 2003 , which, among other things, provides the committee for awarding the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry . He is also a member of the German Academy for Technical Sciences (Acatech) . Since January 2017 he has been President of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors ( GDNÄ ).

Together with Henning Kagermann and Wolf-Dieter Lukas , he designed the future project “ Industry 4.0 ” and published it for the first time on April 1, 2011 in the VDI-Nachrichten .

Wahlster has been a member of the 16-person data ethics commission set up by the federal government since July 2018 .

At the end of 2018, Wahlster retired as professor at Saarland University . On February 1, 2019, Jana Koehler , a PhD student by Wahlster, succeeded Wahlster for both his chair for artificial intelligence at Saarland University and head of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Wahlster remains chief advisor at DFKI.

In February 2019 he was included for the first time as one of only 21 natural scientists in the ranking of the 500 most important intellectuals in Germany, published by the magazine Cicero. In May 2019 he was honored by the Gesellschaft für Informatik as one of 10 influential figures in German AI history.

Wahlster is married with two children and two grandchildren.

Awards and honors

Wolfgang Wahlster (left) at the awarding of an honorary doctorate from Maastricht University (2015), next to him Jimmy Wales , Frans Timmermans and Michelle Craske (from left to right)
Honorary doctorates

Selection of important offices

year Office
1984-1985 Spokesman for the Department of Computer Science at Saarland University
1985-1995 Board member in the Collaborative Research Center 314 “Artificial Intelligence - Knowledge-Based Systems” of the German Research Foundation
1986 - 1988 Spokesman for the artificial intelligence department in the Society for Computer Science
1990-2005 Member of the Steering Committee of the German-Japanese IT forum of the BMBF
1991 Spokesman for the working group of the German AI institutes
1991-1993 President of the World Association for Artificial Intelligence, IJCAII, Palo Alto, USA
1992-2000 Member of the board of the DFG graduate school "Cognitive Sciences"
1993 Conference leader of the World Artificial Intelligence Congress IJCAI-93, Chambery, France
1996 Chair of the Program Committee of the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence , ECAI-96, Budapest, Hungary
1996-2000 President of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence, ECCAI, Brussels
1996 - 2007 Board member in the Collaborative Research Center 378 "Resource Adaptive Cognitive Processes" of the German Research Foundation (DFG)
1997 Chair of the Program Committee of the World Computational Linguistics Congress ACL / EACL, Madrid, Spain
1998-2010 Member of the scientific advisory board of the Italian IT research center IRST, Trento, Italy
1999-2005 Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Swedish Institute for Information Technology, SITI, Stockholm
1999-2011 Member of the jury for the SaarLB Science Prize
2000 President of the World Association for Computational Linguistics ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics), New York, USA
2000-2005 Member of the scientific advisory board of DaimlerChrysler AG
2000-2005 Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Cyber ​​Assist Research Institute on Ubiquitous Computing, Tokyo, Japan
2000-2005 Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the OFFIS Institute for Computer Science at the University of Oldenburg
2000-2009 scientific advisor to all IT research institutes in INRIA , France
2001 - Member of the board of trustees of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics , ITWM , Kaiserslautern
2001-2007 Board member in the international graduate school of the DFG "Language Technology and Cognitive Systems"
2002 - Spokesman for the Feldafing Circle for the Internet Society
2002 - Board member of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), Berkeley, USA
2003 - 2007 Member of the scientific advisory board of the AutoUni , the University of Volkswagen AG , Wolfsburg
2003 - 2009 Member of the scientific advisory board of the Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning at Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
2003-2010 Member of the highest IT advisory body in the EU, ISTAG Information Society Technologies Advisory Group, Brussels
2003 - 2011 Member of the international scientific advisory board of the Trento-Haifa Cooperation Institute at the Rothschild Center for Interdisciplinary Computer Science Applications, Haifa, Israel
2003 Chair of the Program Committee for the ACM Conference on Multimodal User Interfaces, ICMI-2003, Vancouver, Canada
2004 - 2006 Member of the “ Partners for Innovation ” of the Federal Chancellor, the top-level innovation group of the Federal Government
2004 - 2009 Chairman of the jury for the Voice Award - the best German speech dialogue systems
2004 Appointment as a member of the Munich Circle
2004-2014 Member of the International Advisory Board for the Canadian Excellence Program in Computer Science Research (iCore, Calgary)
2005 - 2006 Member of the international selection committee for the Swedish centers of excellence (Berzelius and Linnaeus funding lines) of the Swedish Research Council
2005 - 2007 Spokesman for transfer area 53 “Cognitive Technologies for Practical Applications” of the German Research Foundation
2005 - 2007 Member of the jury for the Sofja Kovalevskaja Awards of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation , Bonn
2005 - 2008 Jury member in the competition "City of Science" of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft
2005 - 2009 Member of the Advisory Board of NTT DoCoMo Euro-Labs , Munich
2005 - 2018 Chairman of the jury for the Hermes Award for technical innovation, Hanover
2006 Chairman of the Program Committee of the International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment
2006 Scientific director of the BMBF strategy group for the IKT-2020 funding program
2006-2013 Member of the German government's research union "Economy - Science" and appointment as a promoter for the innovation field "Information and Communication Technologies"
2006 - Member of working groups at all national IT summits and digital summits of the federal government
2007 Chairman of the jury for the EU's European ICT Prize
2007-2009 Member of the Management Board of Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University , Israel
2007 - 2012 Chairman of the Steering Board of Telekom Innovation Laboratories , Berlin
2007-2014 Board of Directors for Mathematics / Computer Science in the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors ( GDNÄ )
2007 - Member of the International Advisory Board of the National Institutes of Informatics (NII), Tokyo
2007 - 2018 Member of the Cluster Board and Principal Investigator in the DFG Cluster of Excellence “Multimodal Computing and Interaction”, Saarbrücken
2007 - 2018 Member of the International Graduate School for Computer Science as part of the Excellence Initiative of the DFG, Saarbrücken
2008 Member of the International Board of Review for the Alberta Ingenuity Research Centers, Canada
2008 - 2010 Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of SIMTech, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Singapore
2008 - 2010 Member of the board of the AAL innovation partnership between BMBF and VDE
2008 - 2010 Member of the SAP Research Board of Trustees for EMEA
2008 - 2012 Chairman of the Technology and Innovation Council ( TIR ) of the State of Berlin
2008-2020 Member of the University Council of the University of Hamburg
2008-2016 Member of the jury for the Berlin Science Prize
2009 Member of the Future Internet High-Level Expert Panel of the EU, Brussels
2009-2011 Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Advanced Security Research (CASED), Darmstadt
2009-2017 Member of the advisory board of the Walter and Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Foundation, Mainz
2009 - 2018 Member of the strategy board and spokesman for Saarland in the BMBF top cluster "Software innovation for the digital company"
2009-2017 Member of the board of the European Cluster of Excellence EIT ICT Labs of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology EIT
2009-2017 Member of the governance board of the Intel Visual Computing Institute
2011-2013 Member of the Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy
2011-2014 Member of the SAP Research Advisory Board
2011 - 2018 Chairman of the jury for the national software campus
2012-2016 Member of the highest advisory body in the European Union on the Internet of the future (FI-PPP program)
2012-2017 Member of the jury for the CeBIT Innovation Award of the BMBF and Deutsche Messe AG
2012 - Member of the jury for the funding initiative “Research Campus - Public-Private Partnership for Innovations” of the BMBF
2013-2021 Spokesman for the Scientific Advisory Board of the OFFIS IT Institute in Oldenburg
2014 Member of the International Audit Committee for the IDIAP Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland
2014-2019 Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Tokyo, Japan
2015 Member of the Scientific Commission “Digital Society” of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
2015 Chairman of the International Scientific Advisory Board (IAB) of the National Institute of Informatics (NII) as the Japanese Center of Excellence for Informatics, Tokyo, Japan
2016 - Member of the digitization council of the Prime Minister of Saarland
2016-2019 Member of the Advisory Board of the Brightland Business Intelligence and Smart Service Institute (BISS) in Heerlen, Netherlands
2017 - 2018 President of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors ( GDNÄ )
2017 - Member of the steering committee of the BMBF platform "Learning Systems"
2018-2019 Member of the Federal Government's Data Ethics Commission
2018 - Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Technology Center Research Institute, China
2018 - Member of the research advisory board of the Industry 4.0 platform
2019 - Member of the Digital Council of the Federation of German Employers' Associations (BDA)
2019 - Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board (IAB) of the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence in Europe (CLAIRE)

Publications (selection)

  • Wahlster, W., Grallert, H.-J., Wess, S., Friedrich, H., Widenka, Th. (Eds.) (2014): Towards the Internet of Services: The Theseus Research Program, Berlin Heidelberg New York , Springer, 2014
  • Wahlster, W. (ed.) (2013): SemProM: Foundations of Semantic Product Memories for the Internet of Things, Cognitive Technologies, Springer, Berlin, 2013
  • Wahlster, W .; Feld, M .; Gebhard, P .; Heckmann, D .; Jung, R .; Kruppa, M .; Schmitz, M .; Spassova, L .; Wasinger, R. (2010): The Shopping Experience of Tomorrow: Human-Centered and Resource-Adaptive. In: Crocker, MW; Siekmann, J. (Eds.): Resource-Adaptive Cognitive Processes, Heidelberg, Berlin, Springer, 2010, pp. 205-237
  • Schwartz, T .; Stahl, Ch .; Baus, J .; and Wahlster, W. (2010): Seamless Resource-Adaptive Navigation. In: Crocker, MW; Siekmann, J. (Eds.): Resource-Adaptive Cognitive Processes, Heidelberg, Berlin, Springer, 2010, pp. 239-265
  • Wahlster, W., Raffler, H., (2008): Research for the Internet Society: Trends, Technologies, Applications. Trends and recommendations for action 2008 by the Feldafinger Kreis, pp 66, October 2008
  • Hourcade, J.-C., Posch, R., Neuvo, Y., Saracco, R., Wahlster, W. (2009): Future Internet 2020. European Commission, Brussels, ISBN 978-92-79-11320-8 , 48 pp, May 2009
  • Wahlster, W., Kröner, A., Schneider. M., Baus, J. (2008): Sharing Memories of Smart Products and Their Consumers in Instrumented Environments. In: it - Information Technology 50, 1, Oldenbourg, 2008, pp. 45-50
  • Wahlster, W. (2007): SmartWeb: A multimodal dialog system for the semantic web. Appears in: Reuse, B., Vollmar, R. (eds.): Informatikforschung in Deutschland, Heidelberg, Berlin, Springer, 2007
  • Wahlster, W. (2007): From Search Engines to Answer Machines: Semantic Technologies and User Participation in Web 3.0. In: Mattern, F. (ed.): More than just keywords: How will the search engines of tomorrow work? Acatech series, Berlin, Munich, 2007
  • Wahlster, W. (ed.) (2006): SmartKom: Foundations of Multimodal Dialogue Systems. Cognitive Technologies Series, Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2006, 644 pp.
  • Ndiaye, A., Gebhard, P., Kipp, M., Klesen, M., Schneider, M., Wahlster, W. (2005): Ambient Intelligence in Edutainment: Tangible Interaction with Life-Like Exhibit Guides In: Maybury, M., Stock, O., Wahlster, W. (eds.): Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. Proceedings of the First International Conference, INTETAIN 2005, Madonna di Campiglio, Italy, November / December 2005. Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Subseries: Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 3814, pp. 104–113, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005.
  • Wahlster, W. (ed.) (2000): Verbmobil: Foundations of Speech-to-Speech Translation. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Barcelona, ​​Hong Kong, London, Milan, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo: July 2000, Springer.
  • Maybury, M., Wahlster, W. (eds.) (1998): Readings in Intelligent User Interfaces. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1998.
  • Herzog, G., Blocher, A., Gapp, K.-P., Stopp, E., Wahlster, W. (1996): VITRA: Verbalization of visual information. In: Computer Science Research and Development, Vol. 11, 1, 12-19.
  • André, E. , Finkler, W., Graf, W., Rist, T., Schauder, A., Wahlster, W. (1991): WIP: The Automatic Synthesis of Multimodal Presentations. In: Proc. of AAAI Workshop on Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces 1991, 75-93, Anaheim, CA, USA, August, 1991.
  • Wahlster, W., Kobsa, A. (1989): User Models in Dialog Systems. In: Kobsa, A., Wahlster, W. (eds.): User Models in Dialog Systems. Berlin: Springer, pp. 4-34.
  • Wahlster, W. (1982): Natural Language Systems. An introduction to language-oriented AI research. In: Bibel, W., Siekmann, J. (eds.), Artificial Intelligence. Heidelberg: Springer 1982, pp. 203-283.
  • v. Hahn, W., Hoeppner, W., Jameson, A., Wahlster, W. (1980): The Anatomy of the Natural Language Dialogue System HAM-RPM. In: Bolc, L. (ed.): Natural Language Based Computer Systems. Munich: Hanser / Macmillan, pp. 119-253.

Publication of scientific journals and book series

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Wahlster  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. hc mult. Wolfgang Wahlster: Training. In: dfki.de , accessed on January 23, 2019.
  2. ↑ Wilfried Brauer : Laudation for Wolfgang Wahlster (2001). In: dfki.de , archived on May 29, 2002.
  3. ↑ Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. hc mult. Wolfgang Wahlster: Scientific occupation. In: dfki.de , accessed on January 23, 2019.
  4. ↑ Industry 4.0: With the Internet of Things on the way to the fourth industrial revolution. Retrieved July 16, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Data Ethics Commission. Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs, July 18, 2018, accessed on September 2, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Professor Jana Koehler is the new CEO of DFKI In: dfki.de (February 1, 2019).
  7. ↑ Change at the top of the DFKI. In: sr.de (January 23, 2019).
  8. ↑ Cicero 02, 2019, p. 27
  9. ↑ GI selects ten formative minds and technologies in German AI research. Accessed May 31, 2019 .
  10. ↑ member entry of Wolfgang Wahlster at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz , accessed on 06.11.17
  11. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster (with picture and CV) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on June 28, 2016.
  12. ^ Announcement of awards of the Saarland Order of Merit . In: Head of the State (ed.): Official Journal of the Saarland Part I . No. 21 . Saarbrücker Zeitung Verlag und Druckerei GmbH, Saarbrücken May 24, 2017, p. 510 ( saarland.de [accessed June 28, 2017]).
  13. ↑ Saarbrücker Zeitung of June 12th, 2018: Wolfgang Wahlster is an honorary citizen. Retrieved June 12, 2018 .
  14. ↑ GI selects ten formative minds and technologies in German AI research (certificate). Retrieved February 17, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Professor Wahlster CIIRC Medal of Honor gets the Technical University of Prague. Retrieved October 13, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Awarding of the "Courage for the Future: Overcoming Limits". Retrieved October 7, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Professor Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster: Honorary doctorate from Linköping University, Sweden. In: idw-online.de (June 18, 1998).
  18. ↑ DFKI: Honorary doctorate from TU Darmstadt for Prof. Wahlster. In: idw-online.de (November 15, 2001).
  19. ↑ Maastricht University awards an honorary doctorate to Professor Wahlster. In: idw-online.de (January 19, 2015).
  20. ↑ German AI researcher Wahlster awarded in Prague In: t-online.de (January 21, 2020).
personal data
SURNAME Wahlster, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German computer scientist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Saarbrücken