AI Competence Center Receives Permanent Funding

With the consolidation of the AI Competence Centers, the federal government is continuing its national strategy for artificial intelligence, adopted in 2018, and building on the successes of recent years. “The AI Competence Centers are a mainstay of AI research in Germany. With their funding perpetuated by the BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and the federal states, we can offer researchers planning security and the opportunity to work intensively on longer-term and more complex issues. This will help us make Germany even more attractive as an AI location. On top of that, we aim to benefit people as quickly as possible with the research results – by improving the early detection of cancer, for example. With that in mind, another important task of the AI Competence Centers is to promote research transfer as well as the international networking of the German AI landscape. European solidarity is particularly important when it comes to this key technology,” says Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger.

ML2R is expanding to form the “Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence”

The Competence Center on the Rhine and Ruhr – where TU Dortmund University, the University of Bonn and the Fraunhofer Institutes for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin and for Material Flow and Logistics IML in Dortmund have been pooling their expertise since 2018 – will be expanded to form the “Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” and conduct research on latest generation of AI. “The Lamarr Institute stands for 'Triangular AI’ – a new and more powerful generation of artificial intelligence, which is not only trained using data, but also uses additional knowledge and contextual information. We are focusing our research on machine learning in such a way that software and hardware are designed to be sustainable and save resources,” says Director Prof. Katharina Morik from the Department of Computer Science at TU Dortmund University. She manages the institute alongside Prof. Stefan Wrobel from the University of Bonn, Prof. Michael ten Hompel from Fraunhofer IML, and Prof. Christian Bauckhage from Fraunhofer IAIS.

Researchers at the Lamarr Institute investigate how algorithms, models and applications need to be designed in order to yield more powerful yet reliable and trustworthy results. Certification procedures ensure that AI systems are used responsibly and provide appropriate support to people in a wide range of applications. Companies benefit from the direct application of Lamarr research results – from innovative ML technologies and the protection of AI systems to co-working with Lamarr researchers in established formats, such as the “Enterprise Innovation Campus”. Interdisciplinary research, for example with medicine or astrophysics, is working towards achieving a better understanding of our world. The institute is named after the inventor Hedy Lamarr. With this name, the institute also underscores its commitment to the promotion of women, especially in computer science and other scientific and technical fields.

In 2021, the ML2R, the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data, the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Dresden/Leipzig, the Munich Center for Machine Learning and the Tübingen AI Center were successfully evaluated by an international panel of experts. The funding, which has now been made permanent, will enable the institutions to pursue a long-term research strategy, recruit and train internationally renowned scientists and bring AI technologies “Made in Germany” directly into companies. The Competence Centers will continue working closely together in the future.

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