Headquarters for applied AI in Munich

Prof. Fabian Theis will head the new, Germany-wide research network Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Unit (HAICU). This will develop methods that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to handle, link and use large amounts of data.

HAICU is being developed from the Helmholtz-internal think tank "Incubator", which has been pursuing the goal of bringing together and increasing existing expertise in the field of "Information and Data Science" across the disciplines since 2016.

AI needs to be smarter

The Helmholtz Association - with its focus on energy, earth and environment, health, matter, aerospace and transportation - has a huge data treasure that grows exponentially. To enhance this with new deep-learning methods, the Helmholtz Association will invest 11.4 million Euros each year. In this way, the research organization around HAICU is making an important contribution to the Europe-wide effort to catch up with Asia and the United States in the key technology area of AI by 2020.

Fabian Theis, Professor of Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems at the Department of Mathematics and head of the Helmholtz Institute of Computational Biology, sees above all the scientific challenge: everyone is talking about the buzzword big data today, says the 42-year-old mathematician, but: "Bigger only leads to success when AI gets smarter with each new piece of data, because only then can you sift through and combine the data with increasing efficiency. And that’s precisely what we’re working on."

HAICU: network throughout Germany

HAICU is divided into five local groups at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the Helmholtz centers Geesthacht and Dresden Rossendorf and the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen. The coordination center "HAICU central" is based in the Helmholtz Center Munich.

Further details can be found at HAICU.de, and in the press releases of the TUM "Germany-wide AI network headquartered in Munich", and of the Helmholtz Zentrum München "Helmholtz to base new AI flagship unit in Munich to strengthen its Germany-wide research network".