Personal details
Bernd Ludwig studied Computer Science at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1992-1997. His 2004 phd thesis focused on plan-based dialoge management for natural language processing applications and was supervised by Prof. Heinrich Niemann and Prof. Günther G?rz, respectively. Bernd finished his habilitation at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2010 (title of thesis: Plan-based HCI in multimodal recommender systems ("Planbasierte Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion in multimodalen Assistenzsystemen").
1997-2004 Bernd was a post-doctoral researcher at the knowledge processing group of the Bavarian Research Center for Knowledge-Based Systems in Erlangen. He became an assistant professor at the Chair of Artificial Intelligence (Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg) in 2004. In 2010, Bernd was appointed BIT guest professor und postdoc researcher at the Free University of Bozen and the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science der Universitá degli Studi di Trento. After his return in November 2010, he was an associate professor (Privatdozent) until March 2011. Bernd was appointed as professor of Computational Linguistics at the Chair of Information Science at University of Regensburg in August 2011.
His research focuses on the dependcies of Communicative Action in Human Computer Interaction as well as its implementation using efficient algorithms. Furthermore, he is interested in the use of mobile devices as an aid to solve complex tasks using recommender systems. Research projects (ROSE; VAMOS; NADINE) currently lead by Bernd Ludwig strongly reflect this interest.
He is co-editor of the German journal Künstliche Intelligenz and is an appointed reviewer at and organizer of several international conferences.
Research interests
Natural Language Processing
Our main research interest lies in the interference between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural language - viewed from the perspective of automated language understanding: Reconstructing the meaning of utterances automatically requires well suited means for formally representing syntactic and semantic information entailed in these utterances. The precise meaning of an utterance in context can only be determined effectively if information about the context can be incorporated in this inference process. As a consequence, natural language understanding requires also the context to be represented formally. The challenge of this area of research obviously is to develop methods to apply knowledge about the discourse context and the activity context in which utterances are made for inferring the meaning of an utterance in this context and conclude the changes of the context resulting from the utterance.
Another aspect of this issue is the context-aware processing of speech recognizer output. Here, the challenge lies in applying pragmatic knowledge for the evaluation and disambiguation of hypotheses generated by a speech recognizer.
For devising solutions to the issues addressed above, we cover several interconnected areas of research:
- Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of natural language
- Theory of discourse
- Models of discourse representation
- Parsing
- Formal languages and formal logics
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Probabilistic models of natural language
Multimodal User Interfaces
NLU is of interest in our research group as a modality for users to interact with intelligent information systems. Such systems require intelligent interfaces as users and systems interact and exchange information about cooperative problem solving tasks. Intelligent interfaces have to support this highly complex multimodal discourse. To develop innovative solutions in this area, we work on
- models of cooperation
- symbolic and probabilistic planning
- modellng for actions
- task analysis
- problem solving
User Models and User Preferences
When users and information systems cooperate, systems have to react appropriately on user preferences. Understanding the preferences helps understanding the user's behavior, recognizing his current and future activities, and predicting what users could do next. In several use cases, we develop user models for activities and preferences and tackle the areas of
- User modeling
- User preferences
- Recommender systems
Interactive Assistance Systems
In several research projects, we apply our concepts in order to implement and evaluate intelligent assistance and information systems. They are capable to interact in different modalities with their users and solve problems cooperatively. Currently, the focus lies on:
- Pedestrian navigation systems (indoor and outdoor)
- Route planning for routes with multiple means of transport
- Route planning in indoor environments
- Localization in indoor environments
- User adaptive and context aware browsers (e.g. tourist guides on smartphones)
- Personalized information systems for prevention of diseases
Research projects
URWalking (external link, opens in a new window)
Campus navigation and room search at the University of Regensburg (external link, opens in a new window) and OTH Regensburg (external link, opens in a new window)
Teaching
Action Strategies of Intelligent Virtual Agents
lecture | graduate course
Summer 2017
Advanced Methods of IR
seminar | graduate course
Summer 2012
Advanced Seminar Information Science
seminar | undergraduate course | graduate course
Summer 2012 | Winter 2012/13 | Summer 2013 | Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2014 | Winter 2014/15 | Summer 2015 | Winter 2015/16 | Summer 2016 | Winter 2016/17 | Summer 2017 | Winter 2017/18 | Summer 2018 | Winter 2018/19 | Summer 2019 | Winter 2019/20 | Summer 2020 | Summer 2022 | Summer 2023 | Summer 2024 | Summer 2025
Agent Stories - Lecture Series
lecture
Summer 2012
AI for Computer Games
lecture | graduate course
Summer 2017
AI for Serious Games
seminar | graduate course
Winter 2017/18
Algorithms for Human-Computer Interaction
lecture | graduate course
Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2015 | Winter 2016/17 | Winter 2017/18 | Winter 2018/19 | Winter 2019/20 | Winter 2020/21 | Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2022/23 | Winter 2023/24 | Winter 2024/25
Automatic Understanding of Spoken Language (with tutorial)
lecture | graduate course
Winter 2011/12
Case Studies
seminar | undergraduate course
Summer 2019 | Summer 2020
Control of Autonomous, Interactive Robots
lecture | graduate course
Winter 2012/13
Corpus Linguistics (Lecture/Seminar)
lecture | seminar | undergraduate course
Summer 2012
Doctoral Seminar
seminar
Winter 2020/21
Foundations and Application of Machine Learning Methods
lecture | graduate course
Summer 2018 | Summer 2019 | Summer 2020 | Summer 2022 | Summer 2023 | Summer 2024 | Summer 2025
Foundations of Computational Intelligence
lecture | undergraduate course
Summer 2020 | Summer 2022 | Summer 2023 | Summer 2024 | Summer 2025
Heaven - where is the information? User and situation adaptive information systems
seminar | undergraduate course
Winter 2012/13
Human Activity Recognition
seminar | undergraduate course | graduate course
Summer 2012
Human-Machine Interaction Research Seminar: Current Trends in Speech Recognition
seminar
Winter 2011/12
Information Systems (with tutorial)
tutorial | undergraduate course
Summer 2014 | Summer 2015 | Summer 2016 | Summer 2017 | Summer 2018 | Summer 2019
The Intelligent Browser
seminar | graduate course
Summer 2013
Interaction with Virtual Agents
lecture | graduate course
Summer 2018
Interactive Navigation with Landmarks
lecture | graduate course
Summer 2012
Knowledge Representation and Processing in Practice
tutorial | undergraduate course
Winter 2016/17
Lecture Series: Digital Society
lecture
Winter 2014/15
Lecture Series: ChatGPT & Co.
lecture
Summer 2023
Mathematical Foundations: Knowledge Representation and Processing (with Tutorial)
tutorial | undergraduate course
Winter 2011/12 | Summer 2012 | Winter 2012/13 | Summer 2013 | Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2014 | Winter 2015/16 | Winter 2016/17 | Winter 2017/18 | Winter 2018/19
Persuasion with Linguistic Methods
seminar | undergraduate course | graduate course
Summer 2016
Processing of Spoken Language
seminar | graduate course
Summer 2016
Problem-oriented Programming Languages
seminar | undergraduate course
Winter 2018/19
Representing and Processing Certain and Uncertain Knowledge
lecture | undergraduate course
Winter 2019/20 | Winter 2020/21 | Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2022/23 | Winter 2023/24 | Winter 2024/25
Scene affordance and focus of attention - How do people perceive spatial environments?
seminar | graduate course
Summer 2024
Tutorial to Computational Intelligence
tutorial | undergraduate course
Summer 2023 | Summer 2024 | Summer 2025
Tutorial to Introduction to Information Linguistics I
tutorial | undergraduate course
Winter 2019/20 | Winter 2020/21 | Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2023/24 | Winter 2024/25
Tutorial to Information Linguistics II: Language- and Text Technology
tutorial | undergraduate course
Summer 2020
Tutorial to Machine Learning Methods for DH
tutorial | graduate course
Summer 2023 | Summer 2024
Tutorial to Representing and Processing Certain and Uncertain Knowledge
tutorial | undergraduate course
Winter 2021/22 | Winter 2024/25
UR Walking
seminar | undergraduate course | graduate course
Winter 2012/13 | Summer 2013 | Winter 2013/14 | Summer 2014 | Summer 2015
Voice Recognition
seminar | undergraduate course
Winter 2015/16
Activities
Membership in programme committees
- AIA 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 (Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Applications)
- CaRR (Context-awareness in Retrieval and Recommendation) 2011
- ENTER 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
- euroHCIR 2012 (2nd European Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval)
- Interact 2013
- ICAART 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
- ISI 2021
- IWCS 2011 (9th International Conference on Computational Semantics)
- Log-IC 2011 (2nd International Workshop on Logic-Based Interpretation of Context: Modelling and Applications)
- S4F2012 (Searching For Fun Workshop in conjunction with ECIR 2012), S4F2014
- RecSys 2014, 2015, 2021 (Senior PC Member)
- UMMS3 (User Modelling for Motivational Systems 3)
- ECIR 2015
- CHI 2014, 2015
- IIiX 2014
- MobileHCI 2013
Reviewer for journals
- UMUAI (User Modelling and User-Adapted Interaction)
- BNSC (Journal on BioNanoScience)
- BISE (Journal on Business & Information Systems Engineering)
- German Journal on Artificial Intelligence
- TiiS (ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems)
(Co-)chair of conferences and workshops
- CAIA 2010, 2011 (Workshop on Context Aware Intelligent Assistance in conjunction with KI 2010, 2011)
- CHIIR 2022 (General Co-Chair ACM Conference on Human Interaction and Information Retrieval)
- COSIT 2019 (General Co-Chair 14th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory)
- HealthRecSys 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 (Workshop on Health Recommender Systems)
- iiiX2014 (Information Interaction in Context symposium)
- Lifestyle 2012 (Workshop on Recommender Technologies for Lifestyle Change in conjunction with RecSys 2012)
(Co-)supervision of doctoral students
- Sebastian Steindl (ongoing)
- Stefan Kerscher (ongoing)
- Dr. Robert Jackermeier
- Dr. Jürgen Schedlbauer
- Dr. Manuel Ullmann
- Prof. Dr. phil. Dr rer. nat. Theresa G?tz
- Prof. Dr. Christina Bauer
- Dr. Karema Al Subari
Grants and awards
2022 | Zeitschrift für Medizinische Physik (Journal of Medical Physics) Author Award 2022 for the best paper in the previous year (external link, opens in a new window) Theresa I. G?tz, Elmar W. Lang, Christian Schmidkonz, Torsten Kuwert, Bernd Ludwig for the paper "Dose Voxel Kernel Prediction With Neural Networks for Radiation Dose Estimation" (external link, opens in a new window) |
2018 - 2021 | BMBF Research Grant for OPTAPEB |
2018 | AMiner Most Influential Scholar Award |
2016 | 15th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia Nomination for Best Paper Award |
2010 | KI 2010: Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 33rd Annual German Conference on AI Nomination for Best Paper Award |
1997 | SEW-EURODRIVE Foundation Study Award for Diploma Thesis "Partial Logics for Semantics and Discourse" |
Publications
- Jackermeier, Robert and Ludwig, Bernd. "User Behaviour in the Wild: Analysing Naturalistic Log Data of a Pedestrian Navigation App.".
Advances in Cartography and GIScience of the ICA, vol. 2, Copernicus GmbH, 2019, https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/ica-adv-2-8-2019 - Al-Baddai, Saad, Marti-Puig, Pere, Gallego-Jutglà, Esteve, Al-Subari, Karema, Tomé, Ana Maria, Ludwig, Bernd, Lang, Elmar Wolfgang and Solé-Casals, Jordi. "A recognition-verification system for noisy faces based on an empirical mode decomposition with Green’s functions".
Soft Computing, vol. 24, no. 14, Springer, NEW YORK. 2019, pp. 3809-3827. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00500-019-04150-9 - Jackermeier, Robert and Ludwig, Bernd. "Door Transition Detection for Long-Term Stability in Pedestrian Indoor Positioning".
2019 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), Pisa, Italy, 30. Sep. - 3. Okt. 2019 2019, pp. 1-8. https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IPIN.2019.8911810
