Research into the future technology of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly boosted since July 1, 2022. Five of the total six German AI competence centers, including the ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig – Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at the TU Dresden and the University of Leipzig, will now be established as permanent institutions. They will receive institutional funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the participating German states. Previously, the centers were already funded as projects for a limited period. The federal government and the states where the centers are located will provide up to 100 million euros annually. The aim is to establish European and internationally competitive research that will sustainably strengthen Germany as a leading location for research, teaching, and technology transfer in AI.

Dr. Jörn Hoffmann and Dr. Josefine Umlauft in conversation at the “ScaDS.AI Living Lab” in Leipzig: Photo: Swen Reichhold/University of Leipzig

“The AI competence centers are a mainstay of AI research in Germany. With the continuation of their funding by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the federal states, we are giving researchers planning security and the opportunity to work intensively on longer-term and more complex issues. In this way, we are making Germany even more attractive as an AI location. In addition, the research results should benefit people as quickly as possible, such as improved early detection of cancer. That is why another important task of the AI competence centers is to promote research transfer and also the international networking of the German AI landscape. European solidarity is particularly important in this key technology,” says Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger.

With its locations in Dresden and Leipzig, the ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig combines the excellent AI and data science expertise of the Technische Universität Dresden, the University of Leipzig and ten non-university research institutions. To further advance the penetration and usability of AI, understanding its methods, and confidence in its results, up to twelve new AI professorships and one Humboldt Professorship will be filled at the partner universities.

“The institutionalization confirms the successful work of ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig in recent years and the research strength and excellence already achieved in the field of Data Science and AI. Our goal is to advance this excellence with additional professorships and junior research groups both in basic AI research and in data-intensive application fields such as life sciences and earth sciences,” explain directors Prof. Dr. Erhard Rahm (University of Leipzig) and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang E. Nagel (TU Dresden).

The five AI competence centers located at universities and non-university research institutions were evaluated by an international panel of experts in 2021. They will receive a new foundation with the continuation. Together with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), these six AI competence centers form the nucleus of German AI research: the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD), the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Dresden/Leipzig (ScaDS. AI Dresden/Leipzig), the Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), the Tübingen AI Center (TUE.AI) and the Competence Center Machine Learning Rhine-Ruhr (ML2R), which will be transformed into the “Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.”

ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig aims to bridge the gap between the efficient use of mass data, knowledge management, and advanced AI. For this reason, the center conducts interdisciplinary research with an international team of renowned scientists. The focus is on rapidly transferring research results into scientific and business applications. As an integral part of the center, the Transfer and Service Center is a key factor for new cooperations and successful transfer activities in numerous projects with users from science and industry.

• www.uni-leipzig.de