Shape Project

Founded in 1988, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (DFKI) today is one of the largest non-profit contract research institutes in the field of innovative software technology based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods. DFKI is focusing on the complete cycle of innovation – from world-class basic research and technology development through leading-edge demonstrators and prototypes to product functions and commercialization.

The MAS Group, under Prof. J.H. Siekmann, was established in 1991. It has carried out fundamental research in the field of Distributed Artificial Intelligence and has applied the resulting ideas to many areas including transportation, finance, enterprise resource planning, electronic commerce, semantic Web and SOA. Current research is focused on (i) how the OMG’s MDA initiative could be used to develop agent systems in a generic manner and (ii) the development of a platform independent model for agents that could be used to integrate already existing agent-based metamodels and methodologies.

At the Institute for Information Systems (IWi) more than 60 employees (20 of which are fulltime employees) are occupied in the field of application relevant research by the scientific head, Univ.-Professor Dr. Peter Loos. Research and teaching activities include business processes and information systems in the areas of industry, service providers and public administrations. The co-operation with small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) has a significant influence on the applied research work – projects in education and knowledge management play an important part as well.