Leopoldina Prize for Niki Kilbertus

The Academy has been awarding the Leopoldina Prize for Young Scientists since 1993. It is awarded annually to scientists with remarkable scientific achievements who completed their doctorate no more than 5 years ago. The selection group is supranational, and the prize endowed with 5,000 euros. This year, the prize will be handed over to Helmholtz Munich scientist Niki Kilbertus.

Fair and transparent AI

Prof. Dr. Niki Kilbertus investigates ethical machine learning (ML) systems at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). ML is playing an important role in more and more areas of life, for example in medical diagnostics, chatbots or personalized suggestions from streaming providers. However, when ML makes decisions about people in sensitive areas - for example in job interviews or when checking creditworthiness - fairness and transparency must be ensured. Niki Kilbertus is one of the pioneers who have formalized causal concepts of fairness in automated decision-making processes. In order to make decisions, ML must be trained with data that relates them to each other. In his research, Kilbertus places particular emphasis on the cause-and-effect relationships from observational data, the causal inferences. These aim to distinguish genuine causal relationships from mere correlations in data. In the further development of the system, ML is to be enabled to free itself from erroneous assumptions and thus make appropriate decisions. The research aims to develop AI systems that are not only highly accurate, but also ethical, transparent and robust. This development is essential to ensure that AI benefits society as a whole and becomes more trustworthy while minimizing risk and bias.