Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster became
an official member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences during a ceremony in February 2004 in
Stockholm, Sweden. Following the induction ceremony, he addressed the
plenary session of the Academy on the topic, "Understanding Multimodal
Man-Machine Dialog", in which he discussed the results of the BMBF
funded project, SmartKom, which established Germany as a world leader
in the field of Human Computer Interaction.
The
Academy was founded in 1739 and today is responsible for the selection
of Nobel prize winners in ten categories or classes. Prof. Wahlster is
the only German scientist to be a member of the Engineering Sciences
class. According to the charter of the Royal Swedish Academy, each class
may have a maximum of ten foreign and ten Swedish members and membership
is for life.
Membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Science
is important because all members nominating as well as voting
are involved in the annual selection of Nobel prize winners in Physics,
Chemistry and Economics, a grant donated by the Bank of Sweden in memory
of Alfred Nobel. Every year in October, the selection committee makes
its recommendations from among the nominated candidates to the voting
members of the Academy who then cast the deciding votes. Strict secrecy
accompanies each step of the selection process.
Prof. Wahlster has many ties to Sweden: In 1998,
he became the first
German scientist to receive an honorary doctor title from the University
of Linköping. As the Chair of the Computer Science Department at
the University of Saarland, he has mentored many masters and doctoral
candidates who are natives of Sweden. Since 2001, he has been a member
of the science advisory committee to the Swedish Research Institute
for Information Technology (SITI), the largest information systems research
association in Sweden. Since 2003, he has also been the senior scientific
editor of "Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI)",
an international technical journal for Artificial Intelligence published
by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.
The German Minister of Education and Research (BMBF), Edelgard Bulmahn,
congratulated Prof. Wahlster in a personal letter in which she stated,
"In appreciation and recognition of your accomplishments in the
field of research in the areas of artificial intelligence and knowledge
management and for focusing worldwide attention on the research excellence
of the Saarbruecken region in the area of speech processing and Human
Computer Interaction," she continued, "Please accept my special
gratitude for your significant contributions in helping the Ministry
of Education and Research to promote Germany in the world as a center
for leading edge research in your areas of expertise and for increasing
the opportunities for international cooperation."
Next to this prestigious award of membership in the
Nobel Academy, Prof. Wahlster's other awards include the Beckurts Prize
in 2000 and the Federal President's German Future Prize in 2001.
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