ETH Professor receives Körber Prize

This year, the Körber European Science Prize has been presented to Bernhard Schölkopf. Endowed with €1 million, the Körber Prize is one of the highest honors in the sciences. It recognizes pioneering research approaches with strong application potential undertaken by researchers who are active in Europe.

German physicist, mathematician and computer scientist Bernhard Schölkopf is one of the founding directors of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. He has also been Affiliated Professor of Empirical Inference at the ETH since December 2018. Since 2015, he has been sharing directorship responsibilities at the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems.

Schölkopf was honored with the Prize for his research in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence, ETH reported in a press release. Together with his team, he develops algorithms that enable computer programs to react flexibly to situations. They are used in self-driving cars, for example, giving them the ability to pull into a parking space or move over uneven terrain. Areas of application for Schölkopf’s methods range from biology and medicine to economics and the social sciences. According to the Science research journal, he is one of the ten most influential computer scientists in the world.

ETH last had a winner of the Körber Prize in 2015, when it was presented to materials scientist Nicola Spaldin.