Excellent Environment in Freiburg

Prof. Dr. Wolfram Burgard / Photo: Emil Bezold

Information scientist Wolfram Burgard declined the offer of a professorship at the Technical University of Munich.

Wolfram Burgard, Professor for autonomous intelligent systems at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Freiburg and speaker for the new cluster of excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools, has declined the offer of a professorship at the Technical University of Munich. The offer included chairing the Robotics and Mechatronics Center at the German aeronautics and space research center in Oberpfaffenhofen. "We are delighted about our colleagues decision. It shows that Freiburg is an excellent research location and that the university is able to provide an excellent environment for its researchers," as Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans-Jochen Schiewer, rector of the university of Freiburg commented.

As Burgard, who has been distinguished with the Leibniz prize as well as with an advanced grant by the European Research Council, confirmed, "Decisive factors for declining the offer of professorship were amongst others the excellent working environment, the cooperative research community, as well as the outstanding working conditions that the Faculty of Engineering, the University of Freiburg, and the state of Baden-Württemberg are offering." Burgard's most recent success is the new cluster of excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools, which shall develop into a long-term programmatic center for neurotechnology at the University of Freiburg. Researchers from biology, the medical faculty, computer science, and micro-system engineering will develop medical technology that directly interacts with the nervous system, in order to enable information exchange in both directions. The aim is to explore functions of the human brain and to develop interfaces through which patients will be able to control technical devices through their brain. In addition, the cluster will be working on implants that will be able to self-sufficiently generate energy, to recognize illness-related changes in brain activity, and to counter them. "We are delighted to embark on this exciting task, which allows for new research questions whose results will improve the quality of life for patients," as Burgard states. There will also be a new infrastructure at the university, in order to allow for cooperation projects, and additionally a graduate school for robotics will be launched, in order to augment Freiburg's visibility in the field of cognitive technical systems.

Wolfram Burgard holds a professorship at the University of Freiburg since 1999. Since 2006 he has been responsible for the chair in autonomous intelligent systems. His research focus is the development of robots that are able to move independently in an alien environment, to collect data, and fulfill tasks.