H. Lamarr. Photo: LOC
The Lamarr Institute, which was recently opened in the presence of numerous celebrities and in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IML, aims to conduct cutting-edge research in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood film star and a pioneer of modern mobile communications.
Hollywood film director Mel Brooks once said in an interview about Hedy Lamarr: "Oh my God, she was the best-looking film actress there ever was..." Everyone was fascinated by Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, born in Vienna in 1914 to Jewish parents. She filmed the first orgasm on screen (which was intolerable for the Nazis in the 1930s) and the first nude scene in a Czech film: The cameraman had claimed the film crew would keep a safe distance. She didn't know then that "zoom" lenses existed.
Photo: Fraunhofer-IAIS
In 1937, she fled to the United States, but—unbeknownst to most, who were practically blinded by her beauty—she was also an inventor. Among other things, she—by then married to the composer George Antheil—developed a torpedo guidance system during World War II. This system used a so-called frequency-hopping spread spectrum technique, which was later rediscovered for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Since then, experts have been somewhat divided on whether she was a kind of "pioneer of digitalization"—or merely a "mythically glorified diva," as Deutschlandfunk once put it in a tribute (https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/80-jahre-patent-fuer-frequenzsprungverfahren-hedy-lamarr-100.html). At least it was enough to have an institute named after her.
The Lamarr Institute is now one of five university-based AI competence centers nationwide that have been slated to receive permanent funding since the summer as part of the German Federal Government's AI strategy. "A true milestone for AI research in Germany," as it is described.
Photo: IML
North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister-President Hendrik Wüst: "North Rhine-Westphalia should become a hotspot for AI research. With the Lamarr Institute, we are taking a major step closer to this goal – here, researchers are working on answers to questions about the mobility of tomorrow, on innovative production processes, and on smart energy supply." The Minister-President continued: "No generation before us has had
access to as much knowledge and expertise as we do today. And that's why we have every opportunity to find good solutions to the challenges of our time. Artificial intelligence, in particular, is creating new possibilities here." With locations in Dortmund, Bonn, and Sankt Augustin, internationally renowned scientists are conducting cutting-edge AI research. Initially, around €126 million will be available for this purpose until 2028. The researchers at the Lamarr Institute aim to set new standards in the values-based research and development of extremely powerful, yet trustworthy and resource-efficient AI.
Image: US Library of Congress
The Lamarr Institute is a joint venture of TU Dortmund University, the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS, the University of Bonn, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML. It evolved from the former Competence Center for Machine Learning
Rhine-Ruhr (ML2R) and is headed by Professors Katharina Morik, Stefan Wrobel, Christian Bauckhage, and Michael ten Hompel.
The video is from a 2018 movie trailer 
