Since 1979, the prize has been awarded maximally every two years to individual professors for their lifetime achievement., scientific contribution to Artificial Intelligence and engagement in this field of research. The prize will be officially awarded by the President of IJCAI during the opening ceremony of the 23rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-13) on August 5th, 2013 in Beijing.
Professor Wahlster showed himself surprised and delighted about the call from Los Angeles informing him about the decision of the prize committee, which is headed by Professor Ramon Lopez de Mantaras (IIIA, Barcelona): `This is a wonderful recognition of what we have achieved at both the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and my Chair of Computer Science at the Saarland University. If the international community of peers expresses its recognition in such a way, this will be the highest happiness for a scientist. The award incites me and my team to go on getting the best out of our brains in order to promote Artificial Intelligence as a scientific discipline and to make more research findings suitable for everyday use.`
Awardees in the last 20 years: Daniel G. Bobrow (1993, Xerox Parc), Wolfgang Bibel (1999, TU Darmstadt), Barbara Grosz (2001, Harvard), Alan Bundy (2003, U. of Edinburgh), Ray Reddy (2005, CMU), Ronald Brachmann (2007, AT&T Labs), Luiga Carlucci Aiello (2009, Univ. of Rome), Raymond C. Perrault (2011, SRI International). Thus, Wolfgang Wahlster is the second German scientist and fifth European who receives this international award for his achievements in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
