The Chairman of the Supervisory Board Prof. Dr.h.c. Hans A. Aukes thanked Professor Dr. Koehler for her successful work to date and welcomed the scientific orientation of the further cooperation. Prof. Aukes explained: “On behalf of the entire Supervisory Board, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Dr. Koehler for her excellent work as DFKI Managing Director since she took office and to pay special tribute to her identification with the company as expressed in her future work as head of the research department. I am glad that we have been able to win Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger as our new CEO for the DFKI, an internal candidate with an excellent national and international reputation.”
Prof. Dr. Jana Koehler stated: “The work as CEO has already led to very good results in the first few months. But there was clearly too little time for my scientific focus. I am therefore very much looking forward to the substantive work in the newly created DFKI research department “Algorithmic Business and Production” and the concrete contribution that I can continue to make to the success of AI in Germany." The solution that has now been found by mutual agreement opens up both the opportunities of a more industrially oriented research area and of a newly anchored management.
At its meeting on November 7, 2019, in Berlin, the Supervisory Board appointed Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger as the new CEO and Chairman of the DFKI Management Board. Prof. Krüger expressed his gratitude for the trust placed in him: “Together with the employees and management team of the DFKI, we will continue to expand the leading position that the DFKI occupies nationally and internationally to live up to our social responsibility as a driving force for AI innovations together with our shareholders in the future.”
Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger is an internationally renowned expert on human-machine interaction and artificial intelligence. His main areas of research are mobile und ubiquitous spatial assistance systems, which combine the research fields intelligent user interfaces, user modeling, cognitive sciences, and ubiquitous computing. He established the study program Media Informatics at Saarland University in 2010 and is still responsible for it today. He is co-founder of the Saarbrücken-based technology company Eyeled GmbH, which specializes in the development of mobile and ubiquitous information systems. From 2006 to 2008, Krüger was professor for computer science and geoinformatics at Münster University and managing director of the Institute of Geoinformatics. Since 2009, he has held the Globus Endowed Chair of Computer Science at the Saarland University, he is head of the Ubiquitous Media Technology Lab and Scientific Director of the Innovative Retail Lab (IRL) at the DFKI. He studied computer science and economics at Saarland University and completed his doctorate in computer science within the framework of the graduate college “Cognitive Science” in 1999. Prof. Krüger has published more than 200 articles in recognized journals and conferences and is active in international and national expert committees.