Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Frank Kirchner

Frank Kirchner is speaker of the DFKI Bremen and in charge of the research department Robotics Innovation Center with more than 100 employees. Founded in 2006 as a DFKI laboratory in Bremen, the institute is building upon the fundamental research of the Robotics Research Group led by Kirchner at the University of Bremen. Since 2002, the university professor has held the chair for robotics in the faculty of mathematics and computer science. Kirchner studied and obtained his doctorate at the University of Bonn and worked as a senior researcher at the Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD) in Sankt Augustin and at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston (USA). In 2013, under Kirchner’s leadership and following the model of the DFKI, the Brazilian government founded the Brazilian Institute of Robotics in Salvador da Bahia, where he was the Scientific Director during the development phase. There he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2017 for his achievements in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence. Frank Kirchner is one of the leading experts in the field of biologically inspired behavior and motion sequences of highly redundant, multifunctional robot systems. In addition, he supervises a variety of doctoral theses, is a regular reviewer for a number of international scientific journals and conferences and is the author of more than 350 publications in the field of robotics and AI. In 2015, Frank Kirchner was elected and accepted as a member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW).