Profile

Andreas studied computer science with a minor in economics at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern from 1980 to 1986. He completed his doctorate in computer science at the University of Stuttgart in 1989. After working at IBM and Siemens, as well as a guest research stay at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, he was appointed to a professorship for the Chair of Artificial Intelligence at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in 1993.

At the same time, he became scientific director at DFKI and took over the management of a research area now known as Smart Data & Knowledge Services. Since 2009, he has held another professorship (kyakuin) in the Department of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems at Osaka Metropolitan University, with teaching and examination rights. In March 2018, the university named him Distinguished Honorary Professor (tokubetu eiyo kyoju), a distinction received by only five researchers within 135 years.

Andreas has chaired numerous international conferences and serves on the editorial boards of international journals and book series. He has written or edited 14 books and is the author of more than 600 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many of which have received Best Paper Awards. To date, he has supervised more than 500 doctoral, master's, and bachelor's theses.

In addition to keynote lectures at international meetings and conferences, Andreas has given invited technical presentations at prestigious universities and research institutions including MIT, Stanford University, PARC, UC Berkeley, CMU, the London School of Economics, Cambridge University, ATR, NII, Tokyo University, the Chinese Academy of Science, Google Research, and MS Research.

His activities have also included teaching in the Joint Executive MBA Program at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the University of Texas at Austin, and Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in Dalian, China. Andreas also founded the graduate school MIND at the Department of Computer Science, where about 20 students are funded by industry scholarships.

He promotes numerous exchange cooperations with international institutes and universities, including programs with NICT, NAIST, AIST, and the Nakatani Foundation. The joint-credit master's programs in artificial intelligence that he initiated with Kyushu University and Osaka Metropolitan University have been in place for more than 10 years and have enabled many reciprocal research visits by students.

Over the course of his scientific work, Andreas has acquired more than 100 million euros in third-party funding and led large collaborative projects. He is also the founder, initiator, and mentor of many successful start-up companies, three of which have received the Pioneer Spirit Award, first prize in the 1,2,3 GO start-up competition, and the Cebit Innovation Award. In 2015, he was honored as Gründungsförderer des Jahres, or Start-up Promoter of the Year.

He initiated and directs the Competence Center for Deep Learning at DFKI, which was the only one in Germany and one of eight worldwide to be recognized by NVIDIA as part of the NVAIL Excellence Program in 2016. He is one of the leading researchers in deep learning in Germany and internationally.

Andreas is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), Chairman of the Flexible Factory Partner Alliance (FFPA), and a member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). He advises scientific institutions, research programs, and ministries in Germany and abroad.

He is a member of the German platform for AI Learning Systems and was appointed AI Ambassador of the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate in September 2020. In 2021, he became a member of the Executive Board of the International Neurodegenerative Disorders Research Center (INDRC) and a member of the Biotech Advisory Board of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Andreas is also active as a juror and reviewer, including many years as the German representative on the ICT Prize Executive Jury of the European Council for Applied Science (Euro-CASE) and as a member of the jury for the German Demography Prize. His advisory and review roles have included NEC Computers and Communication Innovation Research Labs, the Computer Vision Center at the University of Barcelona, MIMOS, ICDAR, DFG, BMBF, the German Science Council, the Research Council of Norway, the Dutch Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Austrian Science Fund.

In addition to the honors already mentioned, Andreas has received other important recognitions for his work. In 1997, he received one of Germany's most prestigious personal science awards, the Alcatel/SEL Award for Technical Communication, for his scientific achievements.

In 2010, he was invited to Google's Zeitgeist conference in London with the Text 2.0 system as one of the four technological highlights of the year. In document analysis, Andreas is one of the top three scientists worldwide.

In 2019, a jury commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research selected him as one of the most influential scientists in document analysis across 50 years of AI history in Germany. In the same year, he received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) in Sydney, Australia.

In 2021, Andreas was awarded Japan's oldest order, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, in the name of His Majesty Emperor Naruhito. In 2022, he received the Order of Merit of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate.