Professional Service (Selection)
| 1982 | Program Chair of the 6th German Conference on AI, GWAI-82, Bad Honnef |
| 1984 – 1985 | Department Chair, Department of Computer Science, Saarland, Saarbrücken |
| 1986 – 1988 | Chair of the German AI Association (GI/KI) |
| 1989 – 1999 | Member of the Board of Trustees of IJCAI Inc. Palo Alto, International Joint Conferences on AI |
| 1990 – 1995 | Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Christian Doppler Institute for Expert Systems, Vienna University of Technology |
| 1991 – 1993 | Chair of the Board of Trustees of IJCAII, International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence |
| 1991 | Chair of the Association of German AI Institutions |
| 1992 | General Chair of IJCAI-93, Chambery, France |
| 1992 – 2001 | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the OFFIS Institute at the University of Oldenburg |
| 1995 – today | Member of the Executive Committee for IJCAI Conferences |
| 1996 | Program Chair of the European Conference on AI, ECAI-96, Budapest |
| 1996 – 2000 | Chair of ECCAI, the European Coordination Committee for Artificial Intelligence |
| 1997 | Program Co-Chair of the ACL/EACL Conference, Madrid |
| 2000 | President of the Association for Computational Linguistics |
| 2002 – 2004 | Chairman of the Board of the Science Forum Saar e.V. |
| 2002 – 2022 | Trustee of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI); Berkeley, USA |
| 2003 | Program Co-Chair of the Fifth International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI), Vancouver |
| 2003 – 2009 | Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning at the Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada |
| 2003 – 2010 | German Representative of the Highest Advisory Panel for Computer Science/IT Funding Programs, the ISTAG Information Society Technologies Advisory Group of the European Commission |
| 2003 – 2011 | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Trento-Haifa Collaboration between the Caesarea Rothschild Institute and ITC-irst, Haifa, Israel |
| 2004 – 2014 | Member of the International ICT Research Advisory Board of Alberta (IRAC), Canada |
| 2004 – 2014 | Member of the Advisory Board of the International ACM Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI) |
| 2005 | Program Co-Chair of the International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN), Madonna di Campiligio |
| 2005 – 2018 | Chairman of the Jury for the Hermes Award for Technical Innovation, Hanover |
| 2006 – today | Germany’s Chief Academic Advisor for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the Research Union of the German Government under Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel |
| 2006 – today | Member of working groups at all national IT summits and digital summits of the Federal Government |
| 2007 – 2018 | Member of the Cluster Board and Principal Investigator of the DFG Cluster of Excellence “Multimodal Computing and Interaction”, Saarbrücken |
| 2007 – 2018 | Member of the International Graduate School for Computer Science as part of the Excellence Initiative of the DFG, Saarbrücken |
| 2007 – today | Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan |
| 2007 | Chair of the Jury for the European ICT Prize of the European Commission |
| 2007 – 2011 | Member of the Supervisory Board of the T-Labs Research Center at Ben-Gurion University, Ber Sheva, Israel |
| 2008 – 2011 | Member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), SIMTech, Singapore |
| 2008 – 2014 | Member of the SAP Next Business & Technology Advisory Board |
| 2008 – 2020 | Member of the University Council of the University of Hamburg |
| 2008 – 2012 | Chair of the Technology and Innovation Council (TIR) of the Berlin Senate |
| 2009 – 2011 | Chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Advanced Security Research (CASED), Darmstadt, Germany |
| 2009 – 2018 | Member of the Strategy Board and spokesman for Saarland in the BMBF Top Cluster “Software Innovations for the Digital Enterprise” |
| 2009 – 2017 | Board Member of the Kalkhof-Rose Foundation, Mainz |
| 2009 – 2017 | Member of the Governance Board of the Intel Visual Computing Institute |
| 2009 – 2017 | Member of the Executive Steering Board of EIT Digital in the European Institute of Innovation and Technology |
| 2010 – heute | Member of the Advisory Board of the Artificial Intelligence Division of the German Informatics Society |
| 2010 – today | Member of the Board of Trustees of the Innovation Academy of EAI (European Alliance for Innovation), Gent, Belgium |
| 2011 – 2014 | Member of the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento, Italy |
| 2011 – 2018 | Chairman of the Jury for the National Software Campus |
| 2012 – today | Chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership of European Commission |
| 2012 – today | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Platform Industrie 4.0 |
| 2012 – 2017 | Member of the jury for the CeBIT Innovation Award of the BMBF and Deutsche Messe AG |
| 2013 – today | Member of the Feigenbaum Prize Committee of AAAI |
| 2014 – 2019 | Member and Chair of the International Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Tokyo, Japan |
| 2015 | Member of the Peer Review Committee for Informatics Departments at all Dutch Universities |
| 2015 | Member of the International Advisory Board of the Collaborative Graduate Program in Design at the Kyoto University Design School, Kyoto, Japan |
| 2015 | Member of the International Advisory Group for Recruiting a New Director at Fondazione Bruno Kessler for ICT in Trento, Italy |
| 2015 | Chair of the Search Committee for a new Chair of the EIT Digital KIC of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, Brussels, Belgium |
| 2015 – today | Chair of the International Advisory Board (IAB) of the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo, Japan |
| 2016 – 2020 | Member of the University Council of TU Darmstadt |
| 2016 – 2020 | Member of the International Advisory Board of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics, Prague, Czech Republic |
| 2016 – today | Member of the Digitalization Advisory Board of the Prime Minister of the Saarland |
| 2016 – 2023 | Member of the Advisory Board of the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Europe |
| 2016 – today | Member of the Board of Advisors of the Brightlands Institute for Smart Society (BISS) in Heerlen, the Netherlands |
| 2017 – 2018 | President of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (GDNÄ), est. 1822 |
| 2017 – today | Member of the Steering Committee of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Platform Learning Systems |
| 2017 – today | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF), Berlin |
| 2017 – today | Member of the High Level International Committee for Collaborative Laboratories of FCT, Lisbon, Portugal |
| 2017 – today | Member of the Board of Patrons of My Europe 2100 e.V. |
| 2018 – today | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Technology Center Research Institute, China |
| 2018 – 2019 | Member of the Data Ethics Commission of the German Government |
| 2018 – 2022 | Member of the Enquêtekommission of the State Parliament of Saarland „Digitalisierung im Saarland – Bestandsaufnahme, Chancen und Maßnahmen”, Saarbrücken |
| 2019 – 2022 | Member of the Board of Trustees of the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, GFZ – the German Research Centre for Geosciences |
| 2019 – 2022 | Chairman of the High Level Group at DIN/DKE, the Standards Association of German Industry, for the Roadmap of Standardization in AI |
| 2019 – today | Member of the Jury for the German Innovation Award |
| 2019 – today | Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics (CIIRC) and the Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production (RICAIP), Prague |
| 2019 – 2025 | Member of the International Advisory Committee for Applied R&D of VICOMTECH, San Sebastian, Spain |
| 2019 – 2022 | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for IFI Postdoc Program in Computer Science with a focus on AI in the US, Canada, Japan, Korea and Israel, managed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) |
| 2019 – today | Member of the International Advisory Board (IAB) of CLAIRE, Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe |
| 2020 – 2024 | Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Frankfurt Future Council |
| 2020 – 2022 | Member of the advisory board of the AI Campus, the learning platform for artificial intelligence |
| 2021 – today | Member of the Strategic Advisory Board of SIT (Schaffhausen Institute of Technology, Switzerland), which is the majority shareholder of JUB (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany) |
| 2021 – today | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Cluster for Atherothrombosis and Individualised Medicine – curATime |
| 2022 – 2025 | Chairman of the Executive Board of the AI GRID |