German AI Award for CLAIRE and ELLIS

Press release of the State Chancellery of Saarland

The CLAIRE initiative (Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe) and with it also the DFKI as co-founder of CLAIRE were awarded today with the “German AI Prize” for outstanding merits in research and development as well as application and commercialization of artificial intelligence. CLAIRE shares the award with the initiative ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems), in which several scientists from the Saarland are also members.

Minister President Tobias Hans congratulates both European AI initiatives and the Saarland researchers involved in them: “Artificial intelligence is a future technology with broad application possibilities. Bridging the gap between research at our universities and non-university institutions and concrete application forms the basis for a holistic research policy and funding, which we are continuously developing with our innovation strategy in Saarland. The award of the German AI Prize is a sign of the high level of AI expertise in Saarland and DFKI’s innovative approach.”

CLAIRE’s Germany office is located at DFKI and was specifically supported by the Saarland State Chancellery in its early days with funds from the state research funding program. Four Saarland research institutions are involved in the ELLIS research initiative: Saarland University, CISPA – Helmholtz Center for Information Security, the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems.

About the CLAIRE and ELLIS initiatives:

Both initiatives pursue the goal of strengthening European research competence in global competition, especially with the USA, Japan and China, in the field of AI research.

CLAIRE is the acronym for “Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe.” The initiative was launched in 2018 by Dr. Holger Hoos, Professor of Machine Learning at the Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) at Leiden University, the Netherlands; Dr. Morten Irgens, Vice Rector at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway; and Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek, Scientific Director at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarbrücken, Germany.

ELLIS is an acronym for “European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems.” The initiative was founded at the end of 2018 to further develop artificial intelligence, particularly in the field of machine learning technologies. The chairman of the research network is Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schölkopf, director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent System in Tübingen. At the Saarbrücken site, Prof. Dr. Bernt Schiele, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, coordinates the activities of the ELLIS Unit SAM (Saarbrücken Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning).

About the German AI Prize:

The German AI Prize has been awarded annually since 2019 by the media brand WELT for outstanding achievements to research institutes or foundations in the field of artificial intelligence. The German AI Prize is awarded in the categories AI Innovation Prize, which is endowed with 100,000 euros, as well as AI User Prize and AI Special Prize.

Background Saarland Informatics Campus:
800 scientists and around 2100 students from more than 80 nations make the Saarland Informatics Campus (SIC) one of the leading locations for informatics in Germany and Europe. Five globally renowned research institutes, namely the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, the Center for Bioinformatics and the Cluster for “Multimodal Computing and Interaction”, as well as Saarland University with three networked departments and 24 degree programs cover the entire spectrum of topics in computer science.