Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schill

Kerstin Schill studied mechanical engineering and computer science at the Technical University of Munich and completed her PhD in human biology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) in 1993 with a dissertation on the iconic memory.

From 1987 to 2003, she worked as a research fellow and part of an interdisciplinary team investigating the functioning of the brain at the Institute of Medical Psychology at the LMU Medical Faculty, where she headed a research group in the field of "Computational Intelligence" from 1992.

In 2003, Kerstin Schill became professor at the University of Bremen and head of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroinformatics. Since then, a main focus of her research is the investigation of the cognitive abilities of biological systems and their application to intelligent technical systems. From 2011 to 2018, she also served as Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science/Mathematics at her university and from 2014 to 2019 as spokesperson for the "Minds, Media, Machines" research focus area as part of the university's Excellence Initiative.

Since 2018, she is also Rector of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Delmenhorst, an independent Institute for Advanced Study, which offers excellent researchers from abroad the opportunity for a fellowship in Germany.

From 2014 to 2019, Kerstin Schill was member of the Senate of the German Research Foundation (DFG) before being elected as Vice President of the DFG in July 2019. In this role, she focused especially on the impact of the digital transformation on the world of science and was involved in the development of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and the DFG Commission for Sustainability. She also holds various other positions in numerous scientific organisations and committees and was part of the jury for the Erwin Schrödinger Prize awarded by the Stifterverband and the Helmholtz Association until 2021.