Artificial Intelligence
Scientific Symposium about the beginnings, the present and the future of AI-research on the occasion of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Bibel's 80th birthday

Personalised Greetings

Video message from Prof. Bart Selman

Prof. Bart Selman, President-Elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

Alan Mackworth, D.Phil., is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. He works on constraint-based Artificial Intelligence with applications in vision, robotics, situated agents, assistive technology and sustainability. Furthermore, he is a member of the IJCAI Executive Committee (International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization) along with Prof. Dr. Bibel.

A message to Wolfgang Bibel for the Scientific Symposium in honour of his 80th birthday

Prof. Alan Mackworth, D.Phil.

Dear Wolfgang,

We first met sometime around 1985, in a bar; perhaps it was at IJCAI-85 in Los Angeles. I have fond memories of that meeting. I had heard that Wolfgang might be interested in leaving Munich. We had a position available as a Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) AI and Robotics Program and a Professorship at UBC. Luckily, that turned out to be true and we successfully recruited Wolfgang to the CIFAR Program and to UBC Computer Science…

To read the full letter from Prof. Alan Mackworth, D.Phil. to Prof Dr. Wolfgang Bibel, please click here. (opens in new tab)

Prof. Barry O’Sullivan teaches Computer Science at the University College Cork. He served as Head of Department from September 2012 to August 2015. Prof. O’Sullivan is fellow and president of the European Artificial Intelligence Association (EurAI), one of the world’s largest associations for Artificial Intelligence, of which Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Bibel is the founding president.

Comments from EurAI on the Occasion of Wolfgang Bibel's 80th Birthday

Prof. Barry O’Sullivan

On behalf of the European Artificial Intelligence Association, formerly the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI), I am delighted to wish Professor Wolfgang Bibel a very happy 80th birthday.

EurAI would not exist if it were not for the inspired leadership of Wolfgang Bibel in the late 1970s. He was amongst the first to realise that Europe needed an AI association to help support collaboration amongst European AI researchers, as well as provide a higher level of international visibility for European research. He took the initiative to write to many leading figures in the European AI community to advocate for such an association. The initiative received overwhelming support leading, ultimately, to the establishment of ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence, which is today called the European Artificial Intelligence Association.

To read the full letter from Prof. Barry O’Sullivan to Prof Dr. Wolfgang Bibel, please click here. (opens in new tab)

Dr. Einar Fredriksson is the founder and director of IOS Press, a print and online publisher for scientific, technical and medical subject areas. Under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Bibel, he published the newsletter of the European Coordination Committee for AI, which is still published as ECCAI journal AICommunications.

Letter to Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Bibel in honour of his 80th birthday

Dr. Einar Fredriksson

Dear Wolfgang,

while we have known each other since the 60ies, there were long gaps between our encounters. My Professor in Warsaw, Andrzej Mostowski, had a high opinion of your Professor in München, Kurt Schütte. I started as math/computer-science publishing editor at North-Holland/Elsevier in 1969, and helped setting up the Artificial Intelligence journal with Bernhard Meltzer as its editor for the first 8 years. It was only when his American successor took over, you started to insist that the journal should continue having also a European profile…

To read the full letter from Dr. Einar Fredriksson to Prof Dr. Wolfgang Bibel, please click here. (opens in new tab)