Altes Hauptgebäude, Room 074, Hochschulstrasse 1, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany
+49-6151-16-24411 kersting (at) cs (dot) tu-darmstadt (dot) de
Meetings by appointment
In case of important appointments and requests, in particular if you do not get a reply from me, please make sure to contact my administrative assistant Ira Tesar.
Mission. My team and I would like to make computers learn so much about the world, so rapidly and flexibly, as humans. This poses many deep and fascinating scientific problems: How can computers learn with less help from us and data? How can computers reason about and learn with complex data such as graphs and uncertain databases? How can pre-existing knowledge be exploited? How can computers decide autonomously which representation is best for the data at hand? Can learned results be physically plausible or be made understandable by us? How can computers learn together with us in the loop? To this end, my team and I develop novel machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods to deal with uncertainty, capture causality, generate behaviour and to combine learning and reasoning.
Third Mission. My team and I also aim at creating value in the economy, society and culture. To this end, I am an investor of Aleph Alpha, co-founded the KI-Klub, connecting AI experts, media, public, and politicians, and published the Springer book Wie Maschinen Lernen, one of the first German general introductory books on AI and, in particular, machine learning educating the promise and potential of AI to the broader society. We were also privileged enough to inform the public about AI and get our own work covered in (social) media such as New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Scientific American, ARTE, Frontiers Science Blog, Science, FAZ Digitec Podcast, KfW Podcast „Zukunft:digital“, Chainless Life Podcast, Heute Journal, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Rundschau, Zeit Campus, Heise, Spektrum der Wissenschaften, iX Magazin, Focus, among others, and an exhibition at the Nibelungen Museum in Worms, Germany, as well as a AI featured concert with the Singakademie Dresden e.V. To express my point of view on AI, I also had a regular column on AI in the German (Sunday) newspaper Welt (am Sonntag).
Bio. Kristian Kersting is a Full Professor (W3) at the
Computer Science Department
of the TU Darmstadt University, Germany. He is the head
of the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) lab,
a member of the Centre for Cognitive Science, a faculty of the
ELLIS Unit Darmstadt, and the founding co-director of the
Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence (hessian.ai).
After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg in 2006, he was with the MIT, Fraunhofer IAIS, the
University of Bonn, and the TU Dortmund University.
His main research interests are statistical relational artificial intelligence (AI) as well as deep (probabilistic) programming and
learning. Kristian has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers,
co-authored a Springer book on Statistical Relational AI and co-edited a MIT Press book on Probabilistic Lifted Inference. Kristian is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI),
a Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), and a key supporter of the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence in Europe (CAIRNE).
He received the Inaugural German AI Award (Deutscher KI-Preis) 2019, accompanied by a prize of EURO100.000, several best paper and outstanding reviewer awards,
a Fraunhofer Attract research grant with a budget of 2.5 Million Euro over 5 years (2008-2013), and the
EurAI (formerly ECCAI)
Kristian co-chaired the scientific program committee (PC) of ECML PKDD 2013,
UAI 2017,
ECML PKDD 2020, and the AAAI 2021 Focus Area on Neuro-Symbolic AI. He was the General Co-Chair of UAI 2018 and an Associate PC Co-Chair of AAAI 2024. He served as a Councillor of the Association for the Advancements of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2022-2025, and regularly serves on the PC (often at senior level) of several other flagship AI and ML conferences, co-chaired several international workshops,
cofounded the international workshop series on Statistical Relational AI (StarAI) and gave
several tutorials at flagship AI and ML conferences,
He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Machine Learning and AI and is (past) action editor of
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ),
Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (DAMI), and Machine Learning Journal (MLJ) as well as on the editorial
board of KI, the German AI Journal.
Education and Positions.
2022 - now: | Head of the Research Department on the Foundations of Systems AI at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Darmstadt, Germany |
2019 - now: | Full Professor for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the CS Department of the TU Darmstadt, Germany |
2017 - 2019: | Professor for Machine Learning at the CS Department of the TU Darmstadt, Germany |
2013 - 2017: | Associate Professor for Data Mining at the CS Department of the TU Dortmund, Germany |
2012 - 2013: | Juniorprofessor for Spatio-Temporal Pattern in Agriculture at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Bonn, Germany |
2008 - 2012: | Research group leader at the Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany, supported by a "Fraunhofer Attract" grant of 2.5 Million Euros |
2007: | PostDoctoral Associate at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), USA, working with Leslie Kaelbling (supervisor), Josh Tenenbaum, and Nicholas Roy. |
2000 - 2006: | Ph.D. student at the CS Department of the University of Freiburg, Germany, working with Luc De Raedt (supervsior) and Wolfram Burgard. |
1996 - 2000: | Diploma in Computer Science at the CS Department of the University of Freiburg, Germany |
Selected Research Leadership.
2023 - now: | Member of the Academic Advisory Council of Lower Saxony (Wissenschaftliche Kommission Niedersachsen, WKN). |
2022 - 2025: | Councilor of the Association for the Advancements of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). |
2021 - 2025: | Secretary-Treasurer of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) Organization. |
2021 - now: | Co-Spokesperson of the HMWK cluster project "The Third Wave of AI" (3AI), exploring Systems AI. |
2021 - now: | Member of the Selection Committee for the Allocation of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship |
2020 - now: | Founding Co-Director of the Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence, hessian.AI |
2020 - now: | Co-Director of the ELLIS Fellowship Program Semantic, Symbolic and Interpretable Machine Learning |
2020 - now: | Co-Spokesperson of the LOEWE Focus Area WhiteBox, joining the twin disciplines AI and cognitive science to open blackbox models. |
Awards.
Books and Edited Volumes
Publications and Essays
Selected Scientific Activities
Conference Organization
Workshop and Symposium Organization
Selected Program Committees/Reviewing
ICLR 2025 (AC), NeurIPS 2024 (AC), AAAI 2024 (Associate PC Chair), ICLR 2024 (AC), NeurIPS 2023 (AC), ECAI 2023 (SAC), NeSys 2023, NeurIPS 2022 (AC), LoG 2022 (AC), STRL 2022, GroundedML 2022, FATIL 2022, KR 2022, IJCAI-ECAI 2022 (AC), AAAI 2022 (AC), ICLR 2022 (AC), NeurIPS 2021 (AC), TPM 2021, ProbProg 2021, AIES 2021, ICML 2021 (AC), UAI 2021 (SPC), ICLR 2021 (AC), IJCAI 2021 (Senior AC), NeSys 2020, KR 2020, AKBC 2020, FATIL 2020, ICML 2020 (AC), AIES 2020, SDM 2020 (SPC), IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 (AC), IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 Special Track on AI in FinTech (SPC), IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 Special track on AI for CompSust and Human well-being, IJCAI-PRICAI 2020 Demo Track, ICLR 2020, UAI 2020 (SPC), AAAI 2020 (SPC), ECAI 2020 (AC), StarAI 2020, PADL 2020, KR2ML 2019, NeurIPS 2019 (AC), ICDM 2019, IJCAI 2019 (SPC), GCPR 2019 (Track on pattern recognition in the life and natural sciences), DSAA 2019, KDD 2019 (SPC, Member of Best Paper Award Committee for the Applied Data Science Track), AKBC 2019, AAAI 2019 (SPC, Senior Member Track, Demo Track), ICML 2019, ICLR 2019, KI 2019, NeSys 2019 NIPS 2018, ICDM 2018, BNAIC 2018, ICLR 2018, NAMPI 2018, AIKE 2018, AIMSA 2018, ILP 2018, TPM 2018, DSAA 2018, CP 2018, MLG 2018, KI 2018, NAACL-HLT 2018, WWW 2018, CVPR 2018, IJCAI-ECAI 2018 (AC), KDD 2018 (SPC), ICRL 2018, SIGMOD 2018, AAAI 2018 (SPC, Senior Member Track), ILP 2018, ECMLPKDD 2017 (Nectar, PhD), ICDM 2017, CEx 2017, ENIC 2017, GenPlan 2017, KDML 2017, NLP/Journalism 2017, ISWC 2017, SIGMOD 2017, MLG 2017, SUM 2017, IJCAI 2017 (SPC), AAAI 2017 (SPC), MLSA 2017, KI 2017, ACML 2016 (SPC), ICDM 2016, UAI 2016, ECCV 2016, ECML PKDD 2016 (AC), ECAI 2016, IJCAI 2016, ICML 2016, KDD 2016 (AC), AAAI 2016 (SPC), DS 2016, KI 2016, MOD 2016, ICDM 2015, NIPS 2015, ECML PKDD 2015 (GEB, AC), IJCAI 2015 (SPC), MPD 2015, SUM 2015, CVPR 2015, ICML 2015, CoDS 2015, AAAI 2015 (Main, AIW), AAAI 2014 (SPC, SM, SA) , ECML PKDD 2014 (GEB, AC), ICDM 2014 (AC), ECAI 2014 (AC), PODS 2014, KDD 2014 (PC and Best Paper Award Committee), UAI 2014, NIPS 2014, SDM 2014, ACML 2014 (AC and Best Paper Award Committee), CIKM 2014 (KM Track), ESWC 2014, ILP 2014, KR 2014, PGM 2014, DS 2014, CoDS 2014, DATA 2014, LTPM 2014, Know@LOD 2014, MUSE 2014, SenseML 2014, ICML 2010 (AC and Best Paper Award Committee)