Raúl Rojas González (born 1955, in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

) is an emeritus professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

, and a renowned specialist in

artificial neural networks Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

. The FU-Fighters, football-playing robots he helped build, were world champions in 2004 and 2005. He is now leading an

autonomous car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

project called Spirit of Berlin. He and his team were awarded the

Wolfgang von Kempelen Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd ( hu, Kempelen Farkas; 23 January 1734 – 26 March 1804) was a Hungarian author and inventor, known for his chess-playing "automaton" hoax The Turk and for his speaking machine. Personal lif ...

Prize for his work on

Konrad Zuse Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-c ...

and the history of

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs ...

. Although most of his current research and teaching revolves around

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and its applications, he holds academic degrees in mathematics and economics. In 2009 the Mexican government created the Raúl Rojas González Prize for scientific achievement by Mexican citizens. The first recipient of the prize was Luis Rafael Herrera Estrella, for contributions to plant biotechnology. He ran for president at the

in 2010.

History

Raúl Rojas was born on June 25th, 1955 in Mexico City to an engineer and a teacher. He attended university at the

National Polytechnic Institute National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

in Mexico City, where he majored in Mathematics and Physics. He moved to Germany in 1982 as a doctoral student in economics under the guidance of the political economist

Elmar Altvater Elmar Altvater (Kamen, Province of Westphalia, 24 August 1938 – 1 May 2018) was Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continued to work at the institut ...

. The resulting dissertation was published under the title "Die Armut der Nationen - Handbuch zur Schuldenkrise von Argentinien bis Zaire" (The poverty of nations - Handbook of debt crisis from Argentina to Zaire). He became a full professor at

University of Halle-Wittenberg Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university i ...

in 1994, and later moved to the

, where he remains today in the Informatics department. His wife, Margarita Esponda Argüero, is a professor in the same department.

Prizes

*2001: Gründerpreis Multimedia of the German Ministry of Finance and Technology *2002: European Academic Software Award *2004 and 2005: World champions in football robots with the FU-Fighters *2005: Wolfgang von Kempelen Prize for the History of Informatics *2009: Received the Heberto Castillo gold medal for contributions to science from the Mexico City government *2015: Was named Professor of the year by the Association of German Universities *2015: Received the National Prize of Sciences and Arts by the Mexican Government in the category of Technology and Design

Works

''Neural Networks - A Systematic Introduction''
Springer, Berlin, 1996. Available as a fre
e-book
*Die Rechenmaschinen von

, Springer, 1998. *The First Computers, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000. *Encyclopedia of Computers and Computer History, Fitzroy-Dearborn, Chicago, 2001. *RoboCup 2002: Robot Soccer World Cup VI (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), 2002.

References

External links

Homepage of Raúl Rojas at the Free University of BerlinCurriculum vitae of Raúl RojasFU-Fighters football robotsAutonomous car project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rojas, Raul 1955 births Living people National Autonomous University of Mexico alumni Instituto Politécnico Nacional alumni People from Mexico City Mexican scientists Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin