CEE AI

Center for Explainable and Efficient AI Technologies

The CEE AI center is an alliance of high-performance organizations in the Dresden region and reflects the goals of the Artificial Intelligence Strategy of the Federal Government and the European Union. The participating partners would like to lay the foundation stone to bundle the forces for funding measures and large-scale projects in the Dresden region.

Welcome

CEE AI at a glance

We work towards Explainable and Efficient AI technologies, hence the name CEE AI. Our research hub was initially formed by the Technical Universität Dresden and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in the City of Dresden – you may learn about the facts by downloading our PDF brochure.

TU Dresden

The Technische Universität Dresden is one of the top universities in Germany and Europe.

Fraunhofer Gesellschaft

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is the largest organisation for applied research in Europe.

The City of Dresden

Dresden does a greater degree of research than any other city in Germany. It comes top of the ranking among large German cities regarding both, the scientific workforce and the number of research institutes.

CEE-AI Projects

A growing number of projects has already been put into the CEE-AI context.

News and Events

Updates about CEE-AI activities give an insight into the centers work.

Partner Network

The network of partners is constantly growing. See who is already involved.

Motivation

Why did we start CEE AI?

Read more about our motivation

The past years have shown that Artificial Intelligence (AI) when used responsibly, can help to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. Its development affects all our lives and cuts across different organisations. Since the underlying challenges for AI range across several scientific areas, we can only exploit its full potential when we bring researchers and practitioners from different fields together. Within CEE AI, two large research organisations – TU Dresden and Fraunhofer Society – have teamed up to achieve this.

Mission

What is CEE AI doing?

CEE AI supports excellent scientific research spanning the whole spectrum from hardware support, device communication, AI approaches and transfer into practice – a particular focus will be on efficient and explainable AI – and building networks of strong AI partners in the region for new projects.

Read more about our mission
Vision

Where do we want to be in the year 2030?

We aim to make AI approaches more human understandable and certified in order to improve their acceptance in society and reduce the risks of employing AI technology. By 2030, we aim to have AI approaches which outperform current state-of-the-art AI techniques across many application areas while providing the additional advantage of being explainable.

Read more about our vision

Supporting AI lighthouses

CEE AI can build on strong structures at the TU Dresden campus: advantages can be used from the beginning for big data, microelectronics, connectivity, and cyber-physical systems.

  • Efficient
  • Connected
  • Scalable
  • Cooperative

Lighthouse AI approaches

In CEE AI, we will draw on the expertise of the Next Generation Machine Learning Lab of Technische Univerität Dresden and Fraunhofer IAIS as the leading Fraunhofer institute on AI.

  • Explainable (XAI)
  • Knowledge-driven
  • Ground-breaking
  • Certified

Lighthouse AI applications

Fraunhofer institutes in the Dresden region that provide applications for industry as central part of their mission; and TU Dresden reaching out to other organisations and industry.

  • Human-centric
  • Flexible
  • Mobile
  • Reliable

AI for us

CEE AI will detail value and risks of AI for the society and will teach AI concepts for a responsible and informed society by combining excellent research and practical applications.

  • Social
  • Educated
  • Applied
  • Excellent
Partners

CEE AI Partner Network

The network of partners is continuously extended.

“Knowledge builds bridges”

The Technische Universität Dresden is one of the top universities in Germany and Europe: strong in research and considered first-rate with respect to the range and the quality of the study programmes it offers, it is also closely interconnected with culture, business and society.

As a modern comprehensive, multi-discipline university and with its 18 faculties in five schools it has a broad and diverse scientific spectrum that only few other universities in Germany are able to match. The large campus family of the TU Dresden is comprised of 32,400 students and approximately 8,300 employees – among them 600 professors. With 121 degree courses the TU Dresden offers a full range of studies, as a basis for interdisciplinary learning and research.

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“70 years of Fraunhofer – 70 years of future”

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is the largest organisation for applied research in Europe. It conducts research under contract for industry, the service sector and public administration and also offers information and services. The association takes its name from Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787–1826), the illustrious Bavarian researcher, inventor and entrepreneur.

Fraunhofer participates in international networks and organisations like the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO), the Global Research Alliance (GRA) and the World Association of Industrial and Technological Research Organizations (WAITRO).

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Faculty of Computer Science

TU Dresden has one of the largest departments of Computer Science in Germany. With 26 professors, it hosts 2000 students and educates 220 graduates per year, as well as 30 PhDs. The department earns more than 10M€ third-party funds per year, being the second-best grant-raising department in Germany. It takes part in three excellence clusters, two Collaborative Research Centers (SFB 356 and 248), as well as three PhD training groups (Graduiertenkolleg) and a Max-Planck IMPRS Graduate School.

Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering

The Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering has been at the core of the development of TU Dresden and it is today the largest faculty at this university.

Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Tradition and innovation, successful education and research, distinguished scientists and highly motivated young researchers define the profile of the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the TU Dresden. In teaching and research, the faculty covers the complete field of electrical engineering and information technology.

Center for the Physics of Life

PoL is a cluster of excellence of the TU Dresden. The central vision is to understand the physical principles and laws that underlie the dynamic organization of living matter across scales, from molecules to organs. This constitutes a formidable learning and inference task from very large data (petabytes at several GB/s). Therefore, an entire Research Avenue (RA5) of PoL is dedicated to AI and ML research for the biomedical sciences, including the development of self-learning autonomous microscopes, data-driven model inference, inference of mathematical equations and physical laws from biomedical image data, and ML-based computer vision for the life sciences, as well as immersive analytics of dynamic multidimensional datasets.

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Centre for Tactile Internet with Humans-in-the-Loop

CeTI is a cluster of excellence of the TU Dresden. The central vision is to enable people to interact in quasi-real time with cyberphysical systems (CPS) in the real or virtual world via intelligent wide area communication networks in order to enable people and machines to exchange skills and expertise globally.

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Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden

The Cluster “cfaed” addresses breakthroughs in advancing electronics in order to enable hitherto unforeseen innovations. The main research foci result from the Excellence Cluster phase 2012–2018 and the existing excellence here in Dresden. The Cluster aims at impacting the future of electronics by initiating revolutionary new applications such as electronics featuring zero-boot time, THz imaging, and complex biosignal processing.

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Process-to-Order Lab

TU Dresden’s School of Engineering founded the Process-to-Order Lab in 2018 for the digital transformation of the process industries. The lab unites researchers from Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who contribute to this field of research from product to process design, from process simulation to process automation and from information modelling to integration. The lab’s mission is to bridge the unconnected disciplinary digital technology lakes both in academia and industry.

Next Generation ML Lab

The faculties of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and Information Technology have agreed to found an interdisciplinary lab for next- generation machine learning in spring 2019. The lab will unite all researchers developing future machine learning techniques, as well as using machine learning techniques in application areas, such as computer vision or data science. The lab’s particular mission is to develop generalized machine learning techniques such as model inference, symbolic learning techniques, distributed and hardware-based learning techniques.

Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing

The research orientation of ZIH on parallel and data intensive computing is based on its powerful system for high performance computing and high-performance storage. Its focus is on the development of new methods and algorithms for solving the growing challenges of science and research. Moreover, ZIH covers important research challenges in data acquisition, management, and exploitation of large data sets for a broad spectrum of users.

Scalable Data Services and Solutions

The BMBF-funded national competence center for Big Data ScaDS Dresden/Leipzig started its second funding phase in October 2018. ZIH, the faculty of Computer Science of the TUD, and Fraunhofer IVI are part of its expert team. The unique feature of the center is its integrated service center concept. As a central point of contact for interested parties, it pushes the development of Big Data applications and acts as a connecting element between the application areas and methodical Big Data research on a large scale.

Fraunhofer IAIS

Fraunhofer Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS) is the leading institute for AI within the Fraunhofer Society and one of Europe’s leading applied research institutions. With the new office of Fraunhofer IAIS in Dresden, the institute expands their expertise to our region with a focus on conversational AI allowing humans to communicate efficiently with machines.

Fraunhofer IWU

The Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU is an engine for innovations in the research and the leading institute for resource-efficient production. Around 600 employees at our locations in Chemnitz, Dresden and Zittau open up potentials for competitive manufacturing. Our scientific research and contract research focuses on components, processes and the associated complex machine systems – the entire factory.

Fraunhofer IVI

Fraunhofer IVI employs over 120 researchers in three departments. and collaborates closely with the universities TU Dresden and TU Bergakademie Freiberg. IVI is operating in a wide array of transport-related research and development topics, ranging from the fields of connected and automated vehicles, intelligent transport systems, real-time traffic information, sensor technologies, testing and certification processes, while also incorporating information and communication sectors. Many of these fields already use AI methods, such as machine learning and semantic technologies, in today’s applications and are seeking to use more versatile and more efficient AI technologies in the future.

Fraunhofer IIS / EAS

Fraunhofer IIS is one of the most important industrial applied research facilities for the development of microelectronic systems. More than 100 employees design reliable microchips and complex electronic systems in leading-edge semiconductor technologies and develop corresponding design methods in the Division Engineering of Adaptive Systems EAS in Dresden. Further research areas are the development of intelligent sensor systems, data analytics and new approaches for distributed control.

Infineon

End of 2018, Infineon has opened a design center for AI-related chips and automotive electronics in Dresden. The center is headed by Dr. Uwe Gäbler, member of the network Silicon Saxony and initiator of several working groups for IoT applications. It shall grow up to 250 employees and engineers.

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Center for Systems Biology Dresden

The CSBD is a joint center between the Max Planck Society and TU Dresden. It researches theoretical and computational approaches to living systems with a methodological focus on theoretical modeling, deep learning, data-driven equation inference, smart microscopy, genome learning, and numerical computer simulations and high-performance computing.

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CD-CPPS

The CD-CPPS focuses on the conducive design of the cooperation between human operators and technology in cyber-physical production systems. The core research question is how to achieve optimal performance of the entire socio-technical system via the combination of the unique potentials provided by humans and machines for co-working and co-creation.

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Smart Systems Hub

The Smart Systems Hub is part of the national hub initiative of the Federal Ministry of Economics, de:hub. Dresden and Leipzig promote smart solutions and enable the Internet of Things. With exciting start-ups, excellent research and innovative established companies, both metropolises are building on established structures.

5G Lab Germany

The 5G Lab Germany is a world leading research center focusing on the fifth generation of mobile communication system with more than 20 TU Dresden professors and around 20 industry partners. The focus is to carry out research on low latency, resilient, and secure communication to boost the digital transfer in Germany.

Visit the 5G Lab Germany