Aimee van Wynsberghe is the

Alexander von Humboldt professor The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is an academic prize named after Alexander von Humboldt and awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation since 2008. The prize is intended to attract internationally leading scientists from abroad to Ger ...

for "Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence" at the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. She is director of the Institute for Science and Ethics (IWE) and founder of the Bonn Sustainable AI Lab. Van Wynsberghe hosts the Sustainable AI Conference in

Bonn Bonn () is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region. This ...

, Germany, every other year.

Education and career

Originally from

London, Ontario London is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River (Ontario), Thames River and N ...

, she received her bachelor's degree in cell biology from the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO; branded as Western University) is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thame ...

, after which she obtained dual master's degrees in applied ethics and bioethics from

KU Leuven KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. Founded in 1425, it is the oldest university in Belgium and the oldest university in the Low Countries. In addition to its mai ...

in Belgium and the European Union's

Erasmus Mundus The European Union's Erasmus Mundus programme (named after Erasmus, the Renaissance scholar) aims to enhance quality in higher education through scholarship A scholarship is a form of Student financial aid, financial aid awarded to students f ...

program. She received her PhD from the

University of Twente The University of Twente ( ; Abbreviation, abbr. ) is a Public university, public technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands. The university has been placed in the top 170 universities in the world by multiple central ranking tables. ...

in 2012; her dissertation involved the creation of an ethical framework for the use of care robots in the medical field and was nominated for the Georges Giralt Award for best PhD thesis in Robotics. Van Wynsberghe has been working in the field of robotics since 2004, beginning her career as a research assistant at CSTAR (Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advance Robotics). From 2014 to 2017 she was an assistant professor at the University of Twente, where her work focused on robot ethics, before being appointed as associate professor in ethics and technology at

Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...

. She was the first woman to be awarded an

Alexander von Humboldt Professorship The Alexander von Humboldt Professorship is an academic prize named after Alexander von Humboldt and awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation since 2008. The prize is intended to attract internationally leading scientists from abroad to Ger ...

for "Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence" in 2020 and moved to

, Germany to take on the directorship of

Bonn University The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Will ...

's Institute of Science and Ethics and set up the Bonn Sustainable AI Lab In 2015, van Wynsberghe and

Noel Sharkey Noel Sharkey (born 14 December 1948) is a computer scientist born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is best known to the British public for his appearances on television as an expert on robotics; including the BBC Two television series ''Robot W ...

established the

Foundation for Responsible Robotics The Foundation for Responsible Robotics (FRR) is a not for profit non-government organization that advocates for the ethical design and production of Robot, robots. History The FRR was officially launched on December 11, 2015, with the co-found ...

(FRR), a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that advocates for the ethical design and production of robots. In founding the FRR, van Wynsberghe and Sharkey cited the urgent need for a greater level of accountability and attention to ethics in the design of robots, especially those that complete jobs through automation. She is the president of the foundation, organizing multi-stakeholder workshops; writing and disseminating consultation documents and reports; establishing public-private partnerships; and addressing legislative bodies within the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. Van Wynsberghe is also a member of several organizations focusing on the ethics of technology. She has been appointed to the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLG) and is on the board of the Institute for Accountability in the Digital Age and the Netherlands Alliance for AI (ALLAI Netherlands). She is on the advisory board of the AI & Intelligent Automation Network.

Academic contributions

According to Google Scholar, van Wynsberghe's work has been cited over 3800 times and currently holds an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

of 26. She is the author of the 2016 book ''Healthcare Robots: Ethics, Design and Implementation'', which addresses the current and future role of robots in the healthcare sector and the need to impose ethical guidelines on their use.

Awards and honors

Van Wynsberghe was a 2015 recipient of an NWO Veni Personal Research Grant to study the ethical design of care robots. In 2017, van Wynsberghe appeared on Robohub's "25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About" list. In July 2018 she was listed among the

British Interactive Media Association The British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) is a not-for-profit industry body representing the digital industry in the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK ...

's "100 Ai Influencers Worth Following". Van Wynsberghe was a 2018 recipient of the Dutch L’Oréal – UNESCO For Women in Science Fellowship. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for Applied Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in 2020. Since 2022, Aimee van Wynsberghe has been a member of the

Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur The Academy of Sciences and Literature () is a scientific academy in Mainz, Germany. It was established in 1949 on an initiative of Alfred Döblin. The academy's goal is to support science and literature, and in doing so to help preserve and pr ...

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

and advisory board of the Konrad Zuse Schools of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (DAAD). Her project "Desirable Digitalisation. Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures", in collaboration with the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, is funded by Stiftung Mercator with 3.8 million euro.

Media

In January 2018, van Wynsberghe was interviewed for a Raddington Report article entitled “Robot Ethics, Robot Equality.” In June 2018 she was featured on BBC's Today program and was interviewed by Seth Adler at the Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Automation Network. Van Wynsberghe has spoken at major international events including Web Summit, the European Investment Bank Global Investment Forum, AI for Good's Global Summit, and the Economist's Innovation Summit. Van Wynsberghe was interviewed for the 2017 VPRO documentary ''Robo Sapiens'', which discusses humankind's future with robots. In 2019 she was interviewed by Forbes where she discussed the challenges of embedding ethical frameworks into artificial intelligence systems. Aimee van Wynsberghe was featured in Forbes' 2020 list of women leading the 21st-century AI movement due to her significant contributions to the ethics of artificial intelligence.

References

External links

Official Website

Institute for Science and Ethics

Bonn Sustainable AI Lab
{{DEFAULTSORT:van Wynsberghe, Aimee Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Businesspeople from London, Ontario Academic staff of the University of Bonn Organization founders Non-profit executives University of Western Ontario alumni Canadian expatriates in Germany KU Leuven alumni University of Twente alumni Canadian ethicists German ethicists 20th-century German philosophers 21st-century German philosophers Canadian roboticists Women roboticists Artificial intelligence ethicists