Prestigious awards given to two IT pioneers from the Saarland for the transfer of research to industry: Professor Wolfgang Wahlster and Professor August-Wilhelm Scheer

With this prestigious honor, the GFFT highlights Prof. Wahlster's extraordinary efforts on the road from scientific discovery to economic innovation. In his laudation, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Bibel explained: "The GFFT has made Professor Wolfgang Wahlster an honorary member in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the productive and multi-facetted knowledge transfer between basic research and application. This award recognizes the unparalleled lifetime achievements of Prof. Wahlster, which are quite impressively demonstrated in a series of top performances as a basic researcher, university professor, manager, government consultant, and in his many other capacities."

In 2001, Professor Wahlster was the first computer scientist to receive the "Deutsche Zukunftspreis," the best-endowed prize given by the Federal German President for achievement in technology and innovation, for his work on interactive language comprehension and translation assistants in computers. As CEO since 1988, he has established DFKI as one of the world's major research centers for the computer sciences. In doing so, he many times was able to take the latest research findings, especially, in the area of multimodal user interaction and language comprehension systems, and successfully bring them from the research lab to the market place. Together with industry partners, a great many products have been developed that have firmly established Germany's leading position in selected fields of I&C technology. Wahlster has been a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which selects the Nobel Prize winners for physics and chemistry since 2003. He is also a member of the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences and also the Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften (acatech) and the academies in Mainz and Berlin-Brandenburg.

Professor Scheer was made an honorary member for his singular record of lifetime achievement. First and foremost, with this honor, GFFT recognizes his incomparable success in the realization of sustainable flow of knowledge from basic research through applied research to technological realization, application, and global marketing. Prof. Scheer taught at the University of Saarland from 1975 to 2006 and in 2002, he founded one of the leading institutes for information systems in Germany, which today is an integral part of DFKI. In 1984 he founded the international software development and consulting firm, IDS Scheer and, in 1997, established another company called IMC, where he is currently serving as chairman of the board. As the founder of Scheer Group as a network of businesses, Professor August-Wilhelm Scheer is financially engaged in the separate companies, he also supports them with his many years of experience in the IT branch. Prof. Scheer, who developed the ARIS concept, which is one of the most successful methods of business process management in the world, hopes that the Scheer Group Network can succeed in bringing the best ideas and the brightest thinkers together. Since 2007, Scheer has served as president of the high-tech association BITKOM and as vice president of BDI. He is also a member of the senate of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the senate of the Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften, and an active member of the research alliance of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). GFFT presents this honorary membership in recognition of the abilities of Professor Scheer to bring innovative technologies from research to product maturity and then expand them to create leading global companies. He has succeeded in an exemplary manner in helping to build Germany's leading reputation as an internationally recognized center for IT development.

Professors Scheer and Wahlster are members of the federal government's science-industry and sit on the strategy board of the software cluster, the leading edge cluster for software innovation designated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The software cluster supports and promotes research institutes and SME IT companies that are developing the next generation of enterprise software in a paradigm shift in the software industry to open service oriented software platforms and networked software providers.

Since its founding in 1988, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) with offices in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, and Bremen as well as a small project office in Berlin has become the world's largest research institute for this sector. The overall budget volume for 2010 was approximately 36 million euros. DFKI projects address the entire spectrum of application oriented basic research and market and customer oriented development of individual product functions. At present, more than 400 researchers from 46 countries are exploring innovative software solutions with the key content focus on knowledge management, multi-agent technology, simulated reality, language technologies, intelligent user interfaces, image understanding, pattern recognition, robotics, safe and secure cognitive systems, extended reality, and information systems. The record of success: more than 50 associate professors from within our own ranks, 57 spin-off companies, and more than 2000 highly qualified, new high-tech jobs.

DFKI Press Contact:

Heike Leonhard, M.A.
Head of Communications Department
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Campus D3_2
Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3
D-66123 Saarbrücken

Germany

Tel.: +49 (0)681 / 857 75-5390
Fax: +49 (0)681 / 857 75-5485
E-mail: Heike.Leonhard@dfki.de

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