Founded in 1988, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI (www.dfki.de/web),today is one of the largest nonprofit contract research institutes in the field of innovative software technology based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods. DFKI is focusing on the complete cycle of innovation - from world-class basic research and technology development through leading-edge demonstrators and prototypes to product functions and commercialisation.
Based in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, and Bremen, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence ranks among the important “Centres of Excellence” worldwide.
An important element of DFKI's mission is to move innovations as quickly as possible from the lab into the marketplace. Only by maintaining research projects at the forefront of science DFKI has the strength to meet its technology transfer goals. DFKI’s strong committment to effective technology transfer has resulted so far in the creation of more than 50 successful spin-off companies. The key directors of DFKI are Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster (CEO) and Dr. Walter G. Olthoff (CFO).
At DFKI, all work is organized in the form of clearly focused research or development projects with planned deliverables, various milestones, and a duration from several months up to three years.
DFKI benefits from interaction with the Informatics Faculties of the Universities of Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken, and Bremen and in turn provides opportunities for research and PhD thesis supervision to students from these universities, which have an outstanding reputation in Computer Science.
DFKI will focus on the development and application of ForgetIT technologies for improving personal information management. DFKI will lead the work package 9 – “Personal Preservation” and bring into the project its scientific and technological competencies and experience in Personal Information Modelling, Semantic Desktop concepts and realizations, user observation and context detection, and process-oriented information management.
Dr. Ansgar Bernardi is deputy head of the knowledge management research department of the German Research Center on Artificial Intelligence – DFKI GmbH, which develops technologies for the effective support of personal and corporate knowledge work. He conducted numerous projects on learning organizations, knowledge management, distributed organizational memories, and their application in industrial settings. In 2006 – 2008, Dr. Ansgar Bernardi co-ordinated the EU Integrated Project NEPOMUK. Under his guidance and management, 16 partners from 6 European countries developed the concepts, technologies, and open-source implementations of a Social Semantic Desktop, resulting until today in a number of commercial solutions and the foundation of at least one spin-off company.
Dr. Heiko Maus is leading the competence center Virtual Office of the Future at the DFKI where he focuses on innovative knowledge work in modern office environments and develops new solutions to support both reactive and proactive exchange of context-specific knowledge, individual and organizational process know-how, and goal-oriented information extraction. Heiko holds a PhD in Computer Science from Kaiserslautern University. His main research interests are in the areas of assistance of knowledge workers, business process-oriented knowledge management, context research, Semantic Desktop, and personal knowledge management. From 2003-05, he was project leader of the EPOS project (Evolving Personal to Organizational Knowledge Spaces) a nucleus of the PIMO and the ideas of the EU IP Nepomuk. In the German ADiWa (2009-12) project, he investigated how such a personalized assistance can be combined with a company’s agile business processes.
