AI expert Ralf Krestel starts on 1 September 2021 at ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Kiel/Hamburg, 31 August 2021: On 1 September 2021 Ralf Krestel will assume the third professorship in computer science jointly established by the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics and Kiel University. The focus of his research will be on Information Profiling and Retrieval.

The ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics is an information infrastructure for economics which has been actively conducting research for more than ten years through the appointment of professors jointly with universities. The multidisciplinary research group includes five professors and designs digital services for the ZBW. The common thread is Open Science.

With the 40-year-old computer scientist Professor Ralf Krestel the research groups acquires an expert for Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning whose speciality are recommender systems, intelligent user interfaces, and knowledge graphs.

Ralf Krestel will take the chair of Information Profiling and Retrieval at Christian-Albrechts-University on 1 September 2021. Information Retrieval addresses the question of how information objects related to the user’s need, such as publications, research data or Open Educational Resources, can be found completely and efficiently. Ralf Krestel and his team will address the development and testing of the latest AI methods to find and interconnect information in better ways.

Ralf Krestel studied computer science in Karlsruhe and Montreal before gaining his PhD in Hanover in 2012. Two years working as a postdoc at University of California in irvine followed. Back in Germany, he started a scholarship at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam and later headed a research group on text mining at the institute. In 2019/2020, Ralf Krestel was a locum professor for intelligent systems at Passau University.

Ralf Krestel describes his goal as: “I want to improve the information retrieval in ZBW products by means of AI methods. AI methods can lead users of ZBW services faster to better results. Intelligent search tools are indispensable for working on economic problems. Recommender systems and personalised searches can show connections that would remain undiscovered otherwise. Innovative visualisations of information can give an overview of large amounts of data and can thus render relevant information more easily accessible.”

More information about Professor Ralf Krestel

More information about research at the ZBW