Appointment: Damian Borth

1 September 2018. Dr. Damian Borth was born on 31 May 1981. He is a German national.

Besides his studies in engineering (Dipl. Ing.) in Mannheim, Dr. Damian Borth obtained a Master’s degree in IT from Technische Universität Kaiserslautern. In parallel, he studied for a Doctor’s degree in the doctoral programme of Technische Universität Kaiserslautern and  the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in the field of video analysis. His doctoral thesis is entitled Visual Learning of Socio-Video Semantics.

In 2012, Dr. Damian Borth was Visiting Researcher at Columbia University, New York City, where he developed SentiBank, the first systems for visual sentiment recognition. After obtaining his Doctor’s degree in 2014, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. In 2015, Dr. Damian Borth returned to the DFKI, where he headed the Competence Center for Multimedia Analysis & Data Mining. From 2016 onwards, Dr. Damian Borth worked as the founding director of the Deep Learning Competence Center (DLCC), which coordinates the DFKI’s Deep Learning activities and which he established as one of the first NVIDIA AI Labs (NVAIL) in Europe. In addition, Dr. Damian Borth supported the Research and Development Lab for Big Data Analysis and High-Performance Computing of the Fraunhofer High Performance Center for Simulation- and Software-Based Innovation. At present, Damian Borth is a Thomas Mann Fellow and is one of the NVIDIA AI innovators.

Focus on machine learning and deep learning

The focus of Dr. Damian Borth’s work is on the field of the analysis of large volumes of unstructured data such as text, image, video or time series by means of neuronal networks. This places his research in the centre of currently topical work in the field of artificial intelligence with a focus on machine learning and deep learning. Dr. Damian Borth is also involved in a wide variety of scientific organisations owing to his activities as a member of the programme and steering committees of various foundations and his public appearances on discussion panels and as a keynote speaker. Thus Dr. Damian Borth is one of Europe’s most successful younger academics in the field of artificial intelligence.

Social responsibility in AI teaching and research

Inter alia, Dr. Damian Borth teaches at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, supervises doctoral students, Master’s students and undergraduates, and is thus already active in a university environment. In order to broaden access to AI teaching, he developed the curriculum of the first German-language Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in Machine Learning under the aegis of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) and the DFKI. In parallel, Dr. Damian Borth is responsible for the curriculum of the Chartered Financial Data Scientist course of the German Federation for Financial Analysis and Asset Management (DVFA). Dr. Damian Borth is a co-founder of Sociovestix Labs Ltd., a company which combines the field of sustainability with artificial intelligence and develops methods with regard to environmental, social and governance issues.

Photo: Frank Nürnberger/work21.de