2026 IEEE CIS Awards [Society Briefs]

Klaus-Robert Müller is Full Professor for Machine Learning at the Department of Computer Science at Technische Universität Berlin and at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Korea University, Seoul. Over the years he held the roles as director of the Bernstein Center for Neurotechnology, co-director of the Berlin Center for Big Data and director of the Berlin Machine Learning Center. In 2021, he became director of the Berlin Institute for Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD)—one of 5 permanently funded German national centers for AI. In 2020/2021 and recently in 2024/2025 he was on a short (1-year-long) sabbatical from academia to lead a team at Google Brain rsp. DeepMind as Principal Researcher. In 2012, he was elected to be a member of the German National Academy of Sciences—Leopoldina; in 2017 of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences; in 2022 member of the German National Academy of Engineering; and also, in 2017 an external scientific member of the Max-Planck Society (MPII). He received several research awards: among others, in 2014 the Berlin Science Prize awarded by the governing mayor of Berlin; in 2017 the Vodafone Innovation Award; in 2024 the Hector Science award and the Feynman Award; and in 2025 the IEEE CIS Neural Network Pioneer Award. Consecutively from 2019 on he became an ISI Highly Cited Researcher. His research interests are in the field of machine learning, deep learning, explainable AI, and data analysis covering a wide range of theory and numerous scientific (physics, chemistry and medicine) and industrial applications. Google Scholar Citations > 168000, h-index 167.