Otthein Herzog is one of the “ten most influential minds” in German AI history.
May 28, 2019
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theme of the Year of Science 2019. To further familiarise the general public with AI, the German Informatics Society (GI), together with a jury, has honoured the ten most influential people and technologies in the still-young history of AI in Germany. The selection process took place as part of the project “#KI50: Artificial Intelligence in Germany – yesterday, today, and tomorrow”.
One of the ten most influential people is Prof. Dr. Otthein Herzog. The jury based their decision on his influencing the development of the German AI research and application landscape. With his research group at the University of Bremen, he developed numerous successful AI applications. These include, among others, expert systems, machine learning, planning, and configuration.
Otthein Herzog is closely linked to the story of encoway’s foundation thanks to the “configure” application. In 2000, Otthein Herzog, the then head of the Center for Computing Technologies (TZI) in Bremen, actively supported the founding of encoway. This was preceded by a successful research project for the development of a software system for the “knowledge-based configuration” of Lenze drive systems.
We would like to express our heartfelt congratulations to Otthein Herzog on this award. Christoph Ranze, now managing director of encoway, was managing director of the TZI Bremen when encoway was founded. He remembers: “Otthein Herzog was one of the driving forces that helped to create both our company and our success story. Today, encoway has 250 employees and is the leading configuration provider in the DACH region”.
Consequently, “knowledge-based configuration” was also named by the #KI50 jury as one of the “ten most influential technologies”. Read more in the news article “AI experts honour encoway’s ‘groundbreaking’ CPQ technology“.
You can find more information about #KI50 at ki50.de