German expert heads the RICAIP Center of Excellence at the Technical University in Prague

From January 2020, Dr. Tilman Becker will head the newly founded RICAIP (Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production) at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics of the Technical University of Prague (CIIRC CTU). Before moving to the Czech Republic, Tilman Becker spent more than 25 years researching AI topics at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. As part of the project of the same name, he will lead the RICAIP Centre with a budget of EUR 48.2 million, which will promote the development and use of testbed research infrastructures first for the core partners and later also for the whole of Europe. At RICAIP, Becker intends to further develop the latest technologies for the use of AI in industrial robotics with direct applications in production. He was recommended by an international selection committee in 2019 as RICAIP Director.

Becker completed his studies in computer science at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he received his doctorate from the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken. Further career steps led him to the Mercedes-Benz Research Lab and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science in Philadelphia (IRCS UPENN), before he came to the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbrücken in 1995, where he worked intensively with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster. Professor Wahlster is regarded as the scientific father of the Industry 4.0 concept, which he coined in 2011 together with his industrial father Professor Henning Kagermann and his political father Professor WolfDieter Lukas. “Human-robot collaboration in hybrid teams, in combination with service-oriented architectures (SOA), cyber-physical systems (CPS) and multi-agent systems (MAS), is one of the core concepts of Industry 4.0: In all these areas, both the CIIRC and the DFKI are leading academic hotspots. As industrial production is a very important sector in the Czech Republic and Germany, this is an ideal partnership that boosts industrial AI as a driver of innovation for both countries", says Professor Wahlster, Founding Scientific Director and CEA of the DFKI.

Tilman Becker has become an important figure in the networking of the CIIRC's research teams with the DFKI in recent years. "With Dr Tilman Becker at the helm, both the RICAIP research team and the CIIRC as a whole are gaining significant reinforcement – a person with an international reputation, great experience and knowledge", says Professor Vladimír Mařík, Scientific Director of the CIIRC CTU, following the appointment of Dr Becker as Director of RICAIP as a result of an international selection process. "It is important to us that he knows the key partner DFKI very well, which will make it much easier to link research activities, not only in the RICAIP project. The cooperation with German partners in the field of automation and robotization of industrial production is of strategic importance for our institute and the economy of the country. The RICAIP Centre, which will be set up under the leadership of Tilman Becker, will have a European dimension and will enable the use of research infrastructures across Europe", Mařík continued.

"Working for RICAIP in Prague is both a great challenge and a commitment for me", admits Tilman Becker, stressing: "It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a genuine centre of excellence from its beginnings to the ambitious targets defined for RICAIP. I am pleased to play a central role in achieving this goal, which can only be achieved in a team. I am very happy to be able to build on the years of fruitful cooperation between our teams in the DFKI and the CIIRC, so I have great confidence that such a team is present at the CIIRC.”

Becker plays a decisive role in the conception of RICAIP's central ideas. Its goal is to operate internationally and to network the RICAIP testbeds with other European research institutes. He benefits from his in-depth knowledge and experience in the areas of digital transformation, machine learning, cyber-physical production systems and human-machine interaction as well as from the active connections he has to large research networks in the fields of artificial intelligence and big data (e.g. CLAIRE or BDVA) as well as to large industrial companies. In his role as Director, Tilman Becker wants to strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation at RICAIP and focus on the societal impact of new technologies.

The RICAIP – Research and Innovation Centre on Advanced Industrial Production is a project based on a strategic partnership between four leading Czech and German research institutions. The founding partners are the CIIRC CTU together with CEITEC BUT (Central European Institute of Technology Brno University of Technology), DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence) and ZeMA (Center for Mechatronics and Automation Technology), both based in Saarbrücken. The aim of RICAIP is to build a unique distributed research and experimentation workstation ‘RICAIP Industrial Testbed Core’, which is the first of its kind in Europe to develop and test innovative solutions for advanced and fully integrated industrial production, constantly adapting to changing conditions. RICAIP was prepared in two phases within the framework of the Horizon 2020 WIDESPREAD Teaming Calls of the European Union and finally funded with almost EUR 15 million in the Teaming Phase 2 Call. The success of this evaluation means for RICAIP additional funding from the EU Structural Funds under the Czech national OP RDE programme of almost €32 million for both Czech partners, mainly used to equip the testbeds with new technological equipment.

More information www.ricaip.eu

The Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics is a modern science and research institute of the Czech Technical University in Prague (CIIRC CTU), which brings together excellent research teams, young talents and unique know-how to expand technological boundaries and build on the best of the Czech tradition in technical education. The research work of the CIIRC CTU focuses on four main pillars: Industry, energy, smart cities and a healthy society, both in basic and applied research. The CIIRC CTU was founded in 2013 and will start its full operation in 2017 in a newly built facility. The institute currently employs more than 260 people in eight research departments, complemented by center and testbed units for Industry 4.0. The aim is to concentrate excellent research in the fields of robotics, intelligent, distributed and complex systems, automatic control, computer-aided manufacturing, bioinformatics, biomedicine and assistive technologies. The CIIRC CTU supports horizontal cooperation between all parts (faculties and institutes) of the CTU and opens the space for mutually beneficial cooperation with other universities, with the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, with industrial enterprises and international institutions. The CIIRC CTU creates a unique ecosystem of academic-industrial cooperation in which it uses diverse forms of project funding from national, European and private sources.

More information at www.ciirc.cvut.cz.

The Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) was founded in 1707. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Europe and currently the largest technical university in the Czech Republic. CTU offers high-quality education and a long tradition of cutting-edge research and engineering, with approximately 1,700 academic staff, 18,500 students, 8 faculties (construction, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, nuclear and physical engineering, architecture, transport, biomedical engineering, information technology) and 5 institutes (including CIIRC CTU). For the academic year 2019/20, CTU offers its students 170 accredited courses of study, 53 of which are in foreign languages. In the QS World University Ranking, which ranked 1,620 universities worldwide, CTU in Prague is currently ranked 498, in the regional ranking ‘Emerging Europe and Central Asia’ it is ranked 9th, in the field of ‘Computer Science and Information Systems’ it is ranked 251 – 300.

More information at www.cvut.cz