Federal Minister Karliczek Visits TU Dortmund University
- Higher Education Policy
Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek visited TU Dortmund University on Friday, 1 June, to learn more about its research into artificial intelligence. Prof. Katharina Morik from the Department of Computer Science presented the field of machine learning with its fundamentals and applications. The Dortmund scientist is set to head one of the four nationwide competence centers for machine learning that the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) plans to fund.
Expansion of cooperation opportunities with France and Europe
“With the four new machine learning centers, we are strengthening research on artificial intelligence in Germany. In doing so, we are also expanding the opportunities available for cooperation with France and Europe. If we want to assert our position in relation to China and the United States, we have to pool and network our research. And TU Dortmund University plays an important role in this,” said Minister Karliczek. “I want us to comprehensively research artificial intelligence, thoroughly explore opportunities and risks, generate knowledge and understanding, and ultimately learn how to make proper use of it.”
One of Prof. Morik’s special fields at TU Dortmund University is data mining, which involves searching for information in large amounts of data using self-learning systems. This is yet another area where she successfully promotes the transfer from theory into practice: The largest spin-off company in her field is RapidMiner, which has grown to 100 employees worldwide since being founded in 2007. “We can demonstrate that artificial intelligence is a scientific achievement that can boost economic performance,” says Morik. When she looks out of her office window, she sees other companies in the Dortmund Technology Park that her working group collaborates with.
CRC 876 “Providing Information by Resource-Constrained Data Analysis”
The field of data analysis, modeling and simulation is a research focus at TU Dortmund University, where computer science, statistics and mathematics cooperate with the applied sciences. Prof. Katharina Morik has been the spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 876 “Providing Information by Resource-Constrained Data Analysis” since 2011, which combines machine learning with cyber-physical systems and data science. She is also a member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). In this role, she leads, among other things, a working group on the “Learning Systems” platform and was a guest at an expert talk in the Federal Chancellery on 29 May. The computer scientist is a co-founder of the international conference series “IEEE International Conference on Data Mining”.