Holger Hoos is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor of AI at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Professor of Machine Learning at Universiteit Leiden (the Netherlands), and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (Canada), where he also holds an appointment as Faculty Associate at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI). He is board chairman of the Confederation of Laboratories of Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE), vice-president of EurAI, past president of the Canadian Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAIAC), member of the Advisory Board, and former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR). Prof. Hoos leads the VISION coordination mandate for the four European networks of centers of excellence in AI established in 2020.

Holger's research focuses on Human-Centered AI, AI for Good, and AI for All. His goal is to improve the efficiency of AI methods by automatically increasing performance and reducing resource needs; and to broaden access to and use of cutting-edge AI methods. Overall, Holger and his group develop and study AI methods that augment rather than replace human intelligence, and that help human experts to overcome their biases and limitations. Known for his work on machine learning and optimization methods for the automated design of high-performance algorithms and on stochastic local search, Holger has developed – and vigorously pursues – the paradigm of programming by optimization (PbO). He is also one of the originators of automated machine learning (AutoML). Holger works at the boundaries between computer science and other disciplines. Much of his work is inspired by and has broad impact on real-world applications.

In 2018, Holger co-founded CLAIRE, an initiative to advance European AI research and innovation. Incorporated as an international nonprofit in 2019, CLAIRE promotes excellence across all of AI, for all of Europe, with a human-centered focus. In 2021, CLAIRE received, jointly with the European Laboratory for Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), the €100 000 German AI Innovation Prize (Deutscher KI-Innovations-Preis) in recognition of outstanding contributions to development and research in AI. This prize is the largest of its kind in Europe.

In November 2021, Holger was selected for the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in AI, Germany's most highly endowed research award, which honors its recipients for their outstanding research record and aims to facilitate long-term and groundbreaking research contributions. Supported by this award and substantial additional resources made available by the university, he started building a new research group at Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen (RWTH Aachen, Germany) dedicated to the advance of Human-Centered AI, AI for Good, and AI for All, in January 2022. He also serves on the board of directors of the RWTH AI Center.