Professor Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster Awarded the Konrad Zuse Medal
Celebrating Excellence: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster Awarded the Konrad Zuse Medal
ICSI is proud to congratulate Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster, PhD, Distinguished Fellow and Member of the Director’s Circle at ICSI, on being awarded the 2025 Konrad Zuse Medal, Germany’s highest honor for computer scientists.
The Konrad Zuse Medal, named after the inventor of the Z3 computer, has been awarded biennially since 1987 by the German Informatics Society (GI) to recognize outstanding contributions to computer science. Prof. Dr. Wahlster joins an elite group of laureates whose work has profoundly shaped computing and its applications worldwide.
Prof. Dr. Wahlster is celebrated for his life’s work bridging basic research and industrial innovation. As Founding Director and CEO of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), he helped transform DFKI into one of the world’s leading AI research institutions. His groundbreaking contributions in advancing AI research and applications include work on natural language dialogue systems, multimodal human-machine interaction, speech translation systems, and the conceptualization of industry 4.0 in 2010.
Reflecting on the award, Prof. Dr. Wahlster shared:
“Receiving the GI’s highest award is a great pleasure because it gives artificial intelligence—the field I’ve worked in for 50 years—the recognition it deserves. I was fortunate to be involved in shaping the birth of AI in Germany, and today we are experiencing its greatest heyday as a key technology for society.”
In addition to his scientific achievements, Prof. Dr. Wahlster has played an active role in shaping research policy and ethical guidelines for AI, serving on numerous government advisory boards and mentoring more than 75 PhD students, many of whom now hold professorships. He is a fellow of AAI, EurAI, GI, and ICSI, and an elected member of multiple prestigious scientific academies
To learn more about Prof. Dr. Wahlster’s work and achievements:
Photo credit: Mike Auerbach / Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.