Osaka Prefecture University

German Research Center for AI Intends to Open a Lab at Osaka Prefecture University

LastUpDate: January 22, 2021

DFKI Kaiserslautern

DFKI Kaiserslautern

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), has planned to establish its first Lab in Asia at Osaka Prefecture University (President: Masahiro Tatsumisago). The two parties agreed in a LoI on how to proceed to open the lab. As a result, Osaka Prefecture University and DFKI will cooperate with each other even more than before in the areas of both basic and applied research in artificial intelligence.

 
Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger

Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger

Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger, Managing Director of DFKI: “The intended strategic expansion of DFKI in Japan is based on many years of good partnership and a common philosophy. With Japan as a high-tech country, we share the goal of using AI for the benefit of people and society. We are pleased to further expand our cooperation with our like-minded partners in the face of international competition and to deepen it in promising research topics, like Learning Assistance and Smart City.”

 
President Masahiro Tatsumisago

President Masahiro Tatsumisago

President of the Osaka Prefecture University, Prof. Masahiro Tatsumisago: “We have been deepening our academic exchange with the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI); in 2017 we celebrated the 20th anniversary of our exchange and welcomed Professor Dengel as a Distinguished Honorary Professor. The opening of the DFKI Lab Japan, the first branch outside Germany, is very significant. We hope that will be the start of further development of research in the field of artificial intelligence.”

 
Dr. Andreas Dengel

Dr. Andreas Dengel

DFKI and the OPU have been working together successfully for a long time. For example, a learning lab similar to the Immersive Quantified Learning Lab (iQL) of DFKI in Kaiserslautern was set up in Osaka. There, the use of sensor technology and AI for new learning and teaching methods, also with regard to learning cultural differences, is being jointly researched.

“With the opening of the DFKI Lab Japan, we want to further deepen the existing good relationships and cooperations with Japanese universities, research institutes and companies and to further establish the DFKI brand in Japan. With Prof. Dr. Koichi Kise, we have succeeded in gaining an established Japanese researcher as the potential director of the lab, who has also known DFKI very well for decades”, says Andreas Dengel, Executive Director DFKI Kaiserslautern and Distinguished Honorary Professor at Osaka Prefecture University.

 
Prof. Koichi Kise

Prof. Koichi Kise

Prof. Koichi Kise, Professor of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems at OPU and designated Director of the lab: “We have been collaborating with Professor Dengel of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) for more than 20 years and have been promoting joint research and personnel exchange. With the opening of the first laboratory outside of Germany at our university, I expect that our exchange will be even more active than before. We also hope to impact international society by developing together the human-centered artificial intelligence technology that DFKI is aiming for”.

About DFKI

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, with sites in Kaiserslautern, Saarbrücken and Bremen, a project office in Berlin, a Laboratory in Niedersachsen and branch offices in St. Wendel,Trier and Lübeck, is the leading German research institute in the field of innovative software technology based on AI methods. In the international scientific community, DFKI ranks among the most recognized “Centers of Excellence” and currently is the biggest research center worldwide in the area of Artificial Intelligence and its application in terms of number of employees and the volume of external funds. The financial budget in 2019 was 57.5 million Euro. DFKI projects cover the whole spectrum from application-oriented basic research to market- and client-oriented design of product functions.

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Contact:

Computer Science and Intelligent Systems, Osaka Prefecture University
Prof. Koichi Kise

E-mail kise[at]cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp *Please change [at] to @.