Dr. Burcian Becerik-Gerber is a professor and Chair of Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) and founder and the Director of USC Center for Intelligent Environments (CENTIENTS). During the last 15 years, her research focused  on advanced data acquisition, modeling, visualization for design, construction, and control of user-centered responsive and adaptive built environments. She pioneered a new field: Human-Building Interaction (HBI), which is a convergent field that represents the growing complexities of the dynamic interplay between human experience and intelligence within built environments. She published her work in more than 150 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. Her work has received support worth over $14 million from a variety of sources, including the NSF, DoE, DHS and DoT and corporate sponsors. In 2012, MIT’s Technology Review named her one of the world’s top young innovators under the age of 35. She was selected to take part in the NAE’s Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium in 2011 and Frontiers in Engineering Symposium in 2013 for her innovative research and educational approaches in civil engineering. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2014), Viterbi Junior Research Award (2016), FIATECH CETI (Celebration of Engineering & Technology) Outstanding Researcher Award (2018), and Outstanding Engineering Merit Award from the Orange County Engineering Council (2020). In 2018, she was awarded a Rutherford Visiting Fellowship at the Alan Turing Institute, the U.K.’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. She is inducted to the National Academy of Construction (NAC) in 2020 and was awarded ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering award in 2023.

Francisco Chinesta is Professor of computational physics at Arts et Metiers Institute of Technology (Paris), Fellow of the “Institut Universitaire de France” and of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering. He was and is involved in many industrial chairs including AIRBUS, ESI, SKF, RTE and KEYSIGHT. He received many scientific awards including IACM Fellow, IACM Zienkiewicz, ESAFORM. He is author of more than 400 papers and more than 1200 conferences. He was president of the French association of computational mechanics and is at present president of the French Association of Mechanics, as well as director of the GdR I-GAIA on data and artificial intelligence based augmented engineering. He received many distinctions including Academic Palms, French Order of Merit, Doctorate Honoris Causa at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and the Silver medal from the French CNRS. He is the director of the DESCARTES project on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence for the Decision Making in Critical Urban Systems that the CNRS develops in its hub at Singapore.

André Borrmann is Full Professor at the Technical University of Munich and heading the Chair of Computational Modeling and Simulation. He has been the spokesperson for the Leonhard Obermeyer Center of Digital Methods for the Built Environment since 2013 and was Interim Director of the TUM Georg Nemetschek Institute from 2021 to 2022. Among Prof. Borrmann’s main research fields is the application of Artificial Intelligence to the AECO domain. This includes applying AI methods on image and point cloud processing to create information-rich digital twins of construction projects and existing assets. Other AI methods include predictive modeling, natural language processing, as well as pedestrian flow prediction to assist building designers and engineers.

Dr.-Ing. Markus König has been Professor of Computing in Civil Engineering at the Ruhr University Bochum since 2009. He received his PhD in 2003 from the Leibniz University of Hannover with a focus on construction informatics. Between 2004 and 2009 he was assistant professor for theoretical methods of project management at the Bauhaus University Weimar. For more than 10 years, Prof. König has been working on methods using artificial intelligence in construction and has led several research projects in this field. He was awarded the Lower Saxony-Bremen Construction Industry Prize in 2017 and the Konrad Zuse Medal in 2020 for his „achievements in developing and introducing digital construction methods in Germany“.

Marc Nézet is Division Officer (CDO) of the Operate & Manage Division of the Nemetschek Group. In addition, he serves as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) including M&A, Venture Investments and Strategic Partnerships.

Nezet joined Nemetschek after 23 years with Schneider Electric Group, where he has held various senior general management and strategy positions including Senior Vice President Energy Management Software Transformation. During this time, he managed major strategic acquisitions which positioned the technology Group Schneider Electric among the leading software players in buildings and infrastructure. Most recently he held the position SVP, Industrial Cloud Platform Ecosystem of AVEVA Group.

Dr. Angelika Kneidl graduated in Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich in 2005 and completed her PhD from 2009 to 2013, focusing on the modelling of human navigation behaviour in pedestrian flows. In 2013, she founded the TU Munich spin-off accu:rate GmbH, that offers crowd simulation analysis and consultancy in the built environment. As a specialist in pedestrian flow simulation, Dr Kneidl has led more than 80 national and international projects over the last 10 years and has overseen the development of the simulation software crowd:it in close collaboration with universities to incorporate the latest research results. For her innovative contributions she has received several awards. Dr Kneidl regularly shares her insights through presentations and publications in relevant journals and actively participates in various committees and research projects.

Dr. Andreas Liebl is Managing Director of the appliedAI Initiative and the appliedAI Institute for Europe with the goal to „Shape Europe’s innovative power in AI“ by working on advancing organizations to highest levels of AI maturity and by creating state of the art AI applications. He is  member in the Global Partnership on AI and leads the group for „innovation and regulation“ next to other advisory roles. He previously was one of the Managing Directors of UnternehmerTUM, worked for McKinsey and did his PhD at the Technical University of Munich.

Dr. Matthias Standfest has made substantial contributions to the integration of AI in architecture and urban planning, with a strong focus on the application of data-driven strategies in the real estate sector. His key roles include CEO & Co-Founder at a Drees & Sommer AG AI Corporate Startup, Founder of Archilyse AG, and researcher positions at ETH Zürich and the Future Cities Laboratory. Notably, his development of the „Swiss Dwellings“ dataset represents a significant advancement in digital twin technologies, offering a unique resource for the analysis of apartment features globally and the current gold standard for open available datasets in this domain. His work extends to the creation of AI-enhanced predictive models for apartment rental valuations and the execution of over 15 interdisciplinary research projects. These efforts have underscored the potential of AI to revolutionize architectural design and urban development through enhanced data analysis and predictive modeling, contributing valuable insights to both academic research and industry practices.

The city of Munich boasts a rich history and many interesting sites including the Olympia Park and Stadiums, Schloss Nymphenburg, the Frauenkirche, Museums such as BMW World or the Pinakotheken, and much more.

The Bavarian Alps are easily reachable from Munich and are perfect for a day trip.

For more information on events and entertainment in and around Munich, explore the Munich Tourism website.

Ian Smith, TUM GNI
Ernst Rank, TUM
Christos Chantzaras, TUM Venture Lab BE
Tobias Förtsch, TUM Venture Lab BE
Dafydd Cotoarbă, TUM GNI
José Quesada Allerhand, TUM GNI
Katharina Langosch, TUM GNI
Sarah Mühlhaus, TUM GNI