Bosch (www.bosch.com) has presented the Bosch AI Young Researcher Award — ‘endowed’ with 50,000 euros — for the first time.

Gergely Neu, a scientist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, won the jury over with his basic research in reinforcement learning (RL), which is an area of artificial intelligence (AI).

Michael Bolle, chief digital officer (and chief technology officer) at Bosch, congratulated 34-year-old Dr Neu on his ‘excellent achievements’, as he presented him with the Bosch AI Young Researcher Award at AICON 2019 in Renningen.

He said: “This award is a way for the Bosch Center for ArtificialIntelligence to recognise the exceptional achievements of young researchers in artificial intelligence.

"Dr Neu’s research plays a major role in making AI more robust, more reliable and more understandable.”

The five-person jury of researchers from academia and industry reviewed submissions from across Europe and said Dr Neu’s application was the most promising, not least due to his research on probability theory.

His work focuses on known “multi-armed bandit problems”, through which algorithms learn to “find their way through countless situations that can be combined in myriad ways”.

He said: “I am very honoured to accept this award, and I’m especially pleased to see Bosch’s commitment to supporting academic research.

“In recent years, many talented AI researchers have been leaving academia for lucrative jobs in industry, so prizes like the Bosch AI Young Researcher Award play an important part in increasing the prestige of traditional academic careers.”

Dr Neu plans to use the 50,000 euro prize money to amplify his group’s current collaborations and create new ones by inviting guest researchers to his laboratory, and by enabling his own team to be visiting researchers at other laboratories and to attend conferences.