Bernhard Schölkopf elected for UN AI Scientific Panel

Tübingen – Bernhard Schölkopf, who is the Director of the Empirical Inference Department at MPI-IS and Director of the ELLIS Institute Tübingen, was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to the newly created Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence. The panel assesses the opportunities and risks of AI on a global level.

Schölkopf is one of the world's leading machine learning and causality researchers. He develops new learning methods that can recognize structures and causal relationships in large data sets – a subfield of artificial intelligence. His methods have applications in medicine, biology, computer vision, robotics, neuroscience, cognitive science, and astronomy. He has been involved in scientific collaborations spanning gravitational wave detection and exoplanet discovery. Schölkopf is recognised for applying machine learning across diverse fields while maintaining a commitment to ethical AI research.

The Panel is the first global scientific body dedicated entirely to artificial intelligence. It acts as an early-warning system and evidence engine, helping distinguish between hype and reality. It also levels the information playing field by making complex assessments accessible to all UN member states and stakeholders. The panel bridges the gap between AI research and policy by producing policy-relevant annual reports and thematic briefs on AI’s risks, opportunities, and impacts. It informs international debates by presenting findings to the Global Dialogue on AI Governance. Last but not least, the panel ensures inclusive perspectives, with the 40 members reflecting gender, geography, and diverse levels of technological development, including from the Global South.

All candidates were assessed on merit-based criteria of outstanding expertise in AI and related fields, whereafter the 40 members were identified on the basis of this expertise, an interdisciplinary perspective, geographical and gender balance, and inclusion of candidates from developing as well as developed countries, with due consideration to nominations from Member States. The applicant pool demonstrates a broad geographic spread and multidisciplinary reach, consistent with the Panel’s objectives.

Bernhard Schölkopf, born in 1968, studied physics, mathematics and philosophy in Tübingen and London and received his Ph.D. in computer science from the Technical University of Berlin in 1997. From 2001 to 2010, he was a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. Since 2011, Schölkopf has led the Empirical Inference Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen as one of the institute's founding directors. 
 
Schölkopf has received numerous awards, including the Max Planck Research Award in 2011, the Academy Award of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy in 2012, and the Milner Award of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom in 2014. He was appointed to the Leopoldina in 2016, ACM elected him an ACM Fellow at the end of 2017, and in 2018 he was awarded the most prestigious German research award, the Leibniz Prize. In 2019, he received the Research Award of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the Hector Science Award, and the Körber European Science Prize. In 2021, he received the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award. In 2022, he was awarded the ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award for his groundbreaking research in the field of artificial intelligence.
 
Schölkopf was instrumental in founding and shaping the Cyber Valley research consortium in 2016. In April 2018, he also launched the ELLIS Society. Schölkopf is Co-Director of the Tübingen AI Center, an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Tübingen and an Honorary Professor of Computer Science at Technical University (TU) of Berlin. In December 2018, he was appointed Affiliate Professor of Empirical Inference at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.