Honors and Awards (Selection)
| 1972 – 1977 | Scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation, that is granted to 0.25% of the German student population |
| 1991 | Fritz Winter Award for seminal technical contributions to natural language dialog systems |
| 1993 | AAAI Fellow, elected for pioneering work in the development of dialog systems, and outstanding service to the artificial intelligence community |
| 1995 | Information Technology European Award for “WIP a plan-based generation system for adaptive multimedia presentations” |
| 1998 | Degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Institute of Technology at Linkoeping University, Sweden |
| 1999 | EurAI (formerly ECCAI) Fellow, elected for significant and sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe |
| 2000 | Karl Heinz Beckurts Award for pioneering and sustained scientific contributions to language technology and intelligent user interfaces and for the transfer of these results into industrial applications” |
| 2001 | Second Honorary Doctorate from Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany |
| 2001 | 2001 German Future Prize – Germany’s highest scientific prize, presented by the Federal President of Germany for outstanding innovations in language technology and intelligent user interfaces |
| 2002 | Second German Computer Scientist elected Full Member of the German Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz |
| 2003 | First German computer scientist elected Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm |
| 2004 | Appointed Saarland Ambassador by Prime Minister Peter Müller |
| 2004 | Elected Full Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the world’s oldest academy established 1652 by emperor Leopold I |
| 2004 | Elected Full Member of Acatech, the Council for Engineering Sciences at the Union of the German Academies of Science and Humanities |
| 2004 | Induction to the “Wall of Fame for Pioneers of Computer Technology” at HNF, the world’s largest computer museum, one of the four AI scientists featured on the electronic wall |
| 2004 | GI Fellow (German Informatics Association) elected for “outstanding interdisciplinary contributions to computer science, linguistics, and psychology” |
| 2005 | Appointed as Spokesman of the Saarland Ambassadors |
| 2006 | Recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the President of Germany |
| 2007 | Elected Honorary Member of the Institute for Information Technology OFFIS, Oldenburg |
| 2008 | Elected Full Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Leibniz Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), Berlin |
| 2010 | Elected Honorary Member of the GFFT for Outstanding Achievements in Research and Technology Transfer, Darmstadt, Germany |
| 2012 | Eagle of Saint Venceslao Award, the highest recognition given by the Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy for his research on intelligent user interfaces and more than 15 years of scientific consulting services to the IRST research institute in Trento, Italy |
| 2013 | Recipient of the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence for his substantial contributions, as well as his extensive service to the field of Artificial Intelligence throughout his career |
| 2014 | Induction to the Hall of Fame of “the Leading German Personalities in IT” of the Computer Weekly Magazine |
| 2015 | Third Honorary Doctorate from Maastricht University, The Netherlands |
| 2016 | Recipient of the ICMI Sustained Accomplishment Award of the ACM |
| 2017 | Entry in the Golden Books of the City of Mainz and the University of Mainz |
| 2017 | Recipient of an Endowed Honorary Professorship by the Johannes Gutenberg Foundation, Mainz, Germany |
| 2017 | Recipient of the Saarland Order of Merit |
| 2018 | Honorary Citizenship of the City of Saarbruecken, Saarland, Germany |
| 2019 | Named one of 21 natural scientists among the “500 most important intellectuals” in Germany by the Cicero Magazine |
| 2019 | Named one of the 10 most influential figures in the history of AI in Germany by the National Society for Informatics (GI) |
| 2019 | Honorary Medal of CIIRC Czech Technical University (CTU), Prague |
| 2019 | Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin |
| 2020 | Fourth Honorary Doctorate from Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague, Czech Republic |
| 2021 | Elected Foreign Member of the Engineering Academy of the Czech Republic (EACR) |
| 2022 | Fifth Honorary Doctorate from Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg |