Frank Kirchner

Director, DFKI Bremen, Robotics Innovation Center,

Frank Kirchner studied computer science at the University of Bonn and received his doctorate in 1999. At the age of 35, he was promoted to assistant professor at Northeastern University in the US, where he worked on DARPA and NASA robot mobility projects. In 2002 he accepted the call to the University Bremen and founded the chair of robotics, which he still holds. In 2005 he took over the management of the laboratory in Bremen of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). As Scientific Director of the Robotics Innovation Center and site manager, he expanded the Bremen site into the second largest location of the DFKI in Germany. Under his leadership the Brazilian Government founded the “Brazilian Institute of Robotics” in 2012, where he was the Scientific Director during the start-up phase. In 2015, he was elected as a member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW). In 2017 Frank Kirchner was awarded an honorary Doctorate by the Centro Universitário SENAI CIMATEC, Brazil for contributions in the area of Robotics and AI.

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