Ulf Brefeld

Prof. Dr. Ulf Brefeld serves as Professor and Chair of Business Informatics, especially Machine Learning at Leuphana University Lüneburg, where he leads the Institute for Business Information Systems (IIS). His research focuses on statistical machine learning and data mining with significant contributions to explainable AI, network science, and digital transformation applications.

His academic trajectory includes a doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, preceded by computer science studies at Saarland University and Technical University of Berlin. He completed postdoctoral work at Technical University of Berlin and University of Bonn, followed by industry roles at Yahoo! Research (Barcelona) and Zalando (as head of recommender systems), before serving as Professor of Knowledge Mining & Assessment at TU Darmstadt and DIPF (2012-2015).

Prof. Brefeld maintains active leadership in the machine learning community through his research group ML3 (ml3.leuphana.de) and editorial roles including Action Editor for Machine Learning Journal since 2015, Guest Editorial Board positions for ECML PKDD 2017 and Natural Language Engineering, and extensive reviewing for top venues like ICML, NeurIPS, KDD, and AAAI.

• Research Leadership: Directs IIS research in AI explainability, network science, and digital transformation
• Academic Service: Serves on editorial boards of 15+ journals including IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Machine Learning Journal
• Industry Bridge: Leverages prior Zalando/Yahoo! experience to connect academic research with real-world applications