Björn Ommer

Björn Ommer is a full professor at the University of Munich where he is heading the Computer Vision and Learning Research Group. Before he was a full professor in the department of mathematics and computer science at Heidelberg University. Björn received his diploma in computer science from University of Bonn and his PhD from ETH Zurich. Thereafter, he was a postdoc at UC Berkeley.

His research group is teaching computers to "see" - to understand and learn from our world simply by watching it. Although true image understanding is still an ambitious goal, this research has already demonstrated its great transformative power: recently, the group has published a generative AI known as "Stable Diffusion", which is now democratizing the creation of visual content and opening up new directions in the arts, media, entertainment, and beyond. Björn is fascinated to see what we will be able to create with improved support by computers in the future, when AI is turning them into more powerful AND more accessible tools. He also sees a great need for public dialogue on how societies can positively embrace this powerful technology to maximize the benefit for the masses and minimize its risks.