The "German AI Prize" is awarded in the three categories AI Innovation Prize, AI User Prize, and AI Start-Up Prize and is endowed with 100,000 euros. The AI Innovation Prize is awarded to research institutes or foundations for groundbreaking achievements in AI research and development. The "German AI Prize / German AI Award" was awarded for the first time on September 26, 2019.
Minister President of Saarland Tobias Hans congratulates CLAIRE and DFKI as one of the initiators and main supporters of the pan-European organization: "Artificial intelligence is a future technology with broad application possibilities. The award of the "German AI Prize" is a great flagship for the computer science location Saarland and for DFKI Saarbrücken, where CLAIRE's Germany office is also located. I am also pleased because the Saarland State Chancellery specifically supported the CLAIRE initiative in its early days with funds from the state research funding program. In this way, we were able to contribute to the fact that DFKI is now a central player in the European network of excellence. Bridging the gap between research at our universities and non-university institutions and concrete applications forms the basis for a holistic research policy and funding, which we are continuously developing with the innovation strategy."
DFKI site manager and CLAIRE co-founder Prof. Philipp Slusallek is delighted with the award: "We are proud of the recognition and very grateful for this important award and the acknowledgment of CLAIRE's comprehensive and human-centric AI focus. In particular, I would like to congratulate the more than 400 research groups, thousands of supporters, and the newly formed CLAIRE Industry Network who are involved in CLAIRE, making it the largest European initiative to promote AI research and innovation. CLAIRE is an open community and welcomes further contributors from research and industry."
About CLAIRE
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. CLAIRE aims to strengthen European research competence in global competition, especially with the USA, Japan, and China in the field of AI research. Given the existing excellence in all areas of AI in Europe, with some of the world's best AI researchers and a strong industry in many sectors that can benefit from AI, Europe is in a very good position to be a major player in AI.