Prof. Dr. Ana-Maria Olteteanu

Prof. Ana-Maria Olteteanu’s research focuses on human-centered and/or cognitive AI systems that replicate or interface well with various human cognitive functions. Ana-Maria has built many models, especially in the area of creativity and creative problem solving, including generative AI models that replicate various aspects of the cognitive skill. She has both theoretical and applied work that has resulted in various models and assessment datasets requested by 40+ universities.

Topics of reference:

• Cognitive AI systems and cognitive models
• Human-centered AI
• Creative problem solving, computational creativity
• AI assessment systems
• AI supported wellbeing

Christian Freksa, Ana-Maria Oltețeanu, Thomas Barkowsky, Jasper van de Ven and Holger Schultheis (2017) - Spatial Problem Solving in Spatial Structures, The 11th Multi-disciplinary International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence (MIWAI 2017), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS vol. 10607, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, LNAI vol. 10607, p. 18-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69456-6

Freksa C, Barkowsky T, Dylla F, Falomir Z, Oltețeanu A-M, van de Ven J, 2018, Spatial problem solving and cognition, in: Zacks J, Taylor H, eds,Representations in Mind and World , 156-183, New York: Routledge.Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria (2016) - From Simple Machines to Eureka in Four Not-So-Easy Steps. Towards Creative Visuospatial Intelligence. In Vincent C. Müller (Ed.), Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence, Synthese Library, Volume 376, pp 159-180. Springer. Print ISBN - 978-3-319-26483-7, Online ISBN - 978-3-319-26485-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26485-1_11 [OA]

Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria and Falomir, Zoe (2014) –Towards a Compound Remote Associate Test Solver based on Language Data. In Proceedings of the Catalan Conference of Artificial Intelligence, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, IOS Press. https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-452-7-249 [OA]

Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria – Cognition and the Creative Machine, Cognitive AI for Creative Problem Solving, Cognitive Technologies Series, Springer; 2020. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030303211

Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria – A Cognitive Systems Framework for Creative Problem Solving, Doctoral Dissertation, SUUB Bremen, URN http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:46-00105534-13, October 2016.

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Editorial work:

Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria and Bipin Indurkhya – Re-representation in Cognitive Systems - Frontiers in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Cognition ; Frontiers in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, Computational Intelligence; Frontiers in ICT and Digital Humanities, Human-Media Interaction, October 2018. https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/7414/re-representation-in-cognitive-systems

Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria and Bipin Indurkhya – Creativity from Multiple Cognitive Science Perspectives Frontiers in Psychology, Cognitive Science; Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Computational Intelligence; Frontiers in ICT and Digital Humanities, Human-Media Interaction, August 2018. https://bit.ly/2H3uopx

Falomir, Zoe and Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria – Problem-solving, Creativity and Spatial Reasoning in Cognitive Systems , Special Issue with the Cognitive Research Systems journal, to appear September 2018. https://bit.ly/2YZ6g1t

Oltețeanu, Ana-Maria and Falomir, Zoe (2017) – Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Problem-solving, Creativity and Spatial Reasoning in Cognitive Systems, ProSocrates 2017, CEUR – Ws. Vol. 1869, ISSN 1613-0073. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1869/

2023 ProFIT grant (€1,4 m) - for technological innovation projects with an inherent and high technological risk - Investitions Bank Berlin (IBB).

2022 European Innovation Commission - Innovation Pathfinder grant - stage 1

2021 German Research Foundation Grant, as Principal Investigator.

2019 National Science Foundation Grant, US, as Co‑Principal Investigator with US partner

2018 Research and Enterprise Committee Funds - United Kindgtom, as collaboration partner at Goldsmiths, University of London, project “Associations between visual and linguistic creativity assessments”

2017 DFG 3 year grant as Principal Investigator of the project Creative Cognitive Systems.

2017 Central Development Fund award, University of Bremen, to basic project funding.

2016 Grant for Symposium organization support – ProSocrates 2nd Edition.

2016 Impulse Grant for experiments on re-representation, obj. knowledge and creativity.

2016 DAAD RISE grant for an intern fellowship after a competition of research proposals.

2015 Obtained an Impulse Grant for conducting an experiment on Human Insight Problem-Solving.

2015 Granted funds for a research fellowship by DAAD.

Evaluator of grant applications and R&D performance:

• European Commission, HADEA; HORIZON Europe (2022) – 30 grants x €6 million on Health and Digitalization;
• Future and Emerging Technologies H2020 - assessing R&D performance on multimillion grants with 3-7 institutional partners (2017, 2020);
• MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellowships (2022);
• LESTUDIUM Loire Valley Institute for Advanced Studies (2018);

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Example tasks:

• Advising on research and business grant requests and grant deployments (grants €1‐6.5 mil euros R&D grants;
• 200k+ postdoc grants)Visiting institutions, businesses, research groups that have been granted EU grants and reviewing outcomes on behalf of the EU
• Advising grantees of the EU on how to develop new technologies and mitigate risk on bleeding edge innovation solutions

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Journal Reviewer for:

• Thinking and Reasoning Journal;
• Cognitive Science Conference (from 2014);
• Frontiers in Psychology – Performance Science;
• Frontiers in Psychology – Cognition;Knowledge Based Systems Journal;
• Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ;
• PLOS ONE;
• Frontiers in Psychology, Educational Psychology;
• Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures
• Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
• Pattern Recognition Letters Journal;
• Philosophy and Theory of AI;
• Advances in Cognitive Systems;
• Journal of Design Research;
• JARCA - Qualitative Systems and Applications in Diagnosis, Robotics and Ambient Intelligence
• ACM SIGSPATIAL
• CONTEXT
• IDETC/CIE

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Program comittee memberships and conference reviewer

• International Conference on Advances in Human-oriented and Personalized Mechanisms, Technologies, and Services, CENTRIC;
• Cognitive Science Conference - The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
• ICCC – International Conferences on Computational Creativity (from 2017)
• AIC – Artificial Intelligence and Cognition ;
• JCSSE - International Joint Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering
• InNCIT - International Conference on Information Technology;
• COSIT – International Conference on Spatial Information Theory ;
• CogMIR - A Workshop on Cognition in Mixed Realities Environments;
• ProSocrates - Problem-Solving, Creativity and Spatial Reasoning Symposium
• International Workshop on Creative Agents – CREAS;
• Spatial Cognition Conference
• KogWis - The Biannual Conference of the German Cognitive Science Society

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Chair:

• Cognitive Science Conference 2019 (member abstracts co-chair);
• 8th International Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation 2019 (Bio Inspired Engineering co-chair);
• CreaCogMod 2018;
• ProSocrates 2017;
• KogWis 2016,
• ProSocrates 2016.

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Judge

• At the Global Challenge Lab 2021 - an Entrepreneurship programme for hundreds of students and alumni from 11 universities across six continents to develop solutions to help achieve UN SDG 3” Good Health and Well-being – led by the Imperial Enterprise Lab and the Tsinghua x-lab.

• Editorial Board of the Cognitive Systems Research journal (from 2017)
• Guest Associate Editor and Topic Editor on a Special Issue on Re-representation in Cognitive Systems - Frontiers in Psychology/Cognitive Science & Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence/Computational Intelligence. > 51 000 reads
• Organizer and Chair of the workshop Measuring Creativity, at the Cognitive Science Conference in Montreal, Canada, 2019. >100 scientist participated
• Guest Associate Editor and Topic Editor on Creativity from Multiple Cognitive Science Perspectives - Frontiers in Psychology/Cognitive Science & Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence/Computational Intelligence. > 57 000 reads
• Guest Editor on a Special Issue on Problem Solving, Creativity and Spatial Reasoning for the Cognitive Systems Research journal.Editor of the CEUR Proceedings of the ProSocrates 2017 workshop.
• Organized the 2nd Edition of the ProSocrates Symposium at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg.
• Organized the 1st Edition of the ProSocrates Symposium - Problem Solving, Creativity and Spatial Reasoning in Cognitive Systems – at KogWis 2016.

Prizes, acknowledgements:

• 2017 Nominated for the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
• 2017 Awarded the OLB 1st Science Prize for Doctoral Dissertation.
• 2017 Doctoral Dissertation nominated for the Robert J. Glushko prize in Cognitive Science.
• 2017 Doctoral Dissertation nominated for the prestigious EurAI Dissertation award.
• 2016 Received the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) Junior Associate Fellowship.
• 2013 Invited as Fellow of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum 2013, an event bringing together Abel, Fields and Turing Laureates and the next generation of mathematics and informatics researchers.
• 2011-2012 Pre-Doctoral Scholarship in SFB/TR8 - The interdisciplinary Transregional Collaborative Research Center Spatial Cognition: Reasoning, Action, Interaction, at Cognitive Systems, University of Bremen

Conference presentations and invited talks:

• Cognitive Science Conference Montreal, Canada;
• Conf. On Interplay btw. Natural and Artificial Computation Almeria, Spain;
• Hacking HR Forum, WeWork Atrium Tower, Berlin;
• Startup Incubator Berlin;
• Profund Innovation, Berlin;
• Mercury Toastmasters Club, Berlin;
• Center Toastmasters Club, Berlin;
• Spreeredner Toastmasters Club, Berlin;
• Cognitive Science Conference, Madison, US;
• Cognitive Soapbox Science, Berlin;
• Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, Larnaca, Cyprus;
• Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück, Germany;
• Freie Universität Berlin;
• German Cognitive Science Conference, Hilton Metropole London, UK;
• Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK), Delmenhorst;
• German Society of Informatics, Bonn, Germany;
• Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam;
• Theater Laboratorium Oldenburg, Germany;
• University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands;
• Cognitive Sciences Excellenz Cluster, Potsdam Universität, Germany;
• SITIS, Naples, Italy;
• KogWis, Bremen, Germany;
• ESSLLI, Bolzano, Italy;
• Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, Torino, Italy;
• International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI**), Buenos Aires**, Argentina; C3GI, Istanbul, Turkey;
• European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Prague;
• Robotics Science and Systems, Berkeley, USA;
• Philosophy and Theory of AI Conference, Oxford, UK;
• Summer School of Spatial Cognition, Santa Barbara, USA, etc.

• AISB – The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour
• CSS – Cognitive Science Society
• EurAI – The European Association for Artificial Intelligence (through AISB)
• GK – German Society for Cognitive Science

Advisory positions on AI innovation to various start-ups; example business cases:

• AI for clinical research digital products; tech infrastructure for start‑ups product line;
• A psychometrics for digital marketers start-up;
• A reproductive health chatbot – repurposing of datasets;
• A social engagement in teams AI product – innovation AI sparring partner;
• An AI training product for leaders to better understand, support and solidify their team;
• An AI innovation for childcare in Singapore where the metrics of children are tracked to enable their wellbeing and communication between carers and parents is optimized;
• A life coaching tool meant to support users have NEW experiences, to increase their confidence, flexibility and skillset – AI innovation on recommending path of next experiences