Bjoern M. Eskofier (SM, IEEE) heads the Machine Learning and Data Analytics (MaD) Lab at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuernberg (FAU). He is also the founding spokesperson of FAU’s Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE), spokesperson of the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action GAIA-X use case project “TEAM-X” and co-spokesperson of the German Research Foundation collaborative research center “EmpkinS”. Since April 2023, he is an associate principal investigator and leader of the research group “Translational Digital Health” at the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich. From April to August 2023, he is a visiting professor in Prof. Scott Delp’s NMBL lab which is part of Stanford University’s Schools of Engineering and Medicine.

Dr. Eskofier studied Electrical Engineering at the FAU and graduated in 2006. He then did his Ph.D. in Biomechanics under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Benno Nigg at the University of Calgary (Canada). He authored more than 400 peer-reviewed articles, holds 5 patents, started three spinoff startup companies, and is in a supporting role for further startups. He won several medical-technical research awards, including the “Curious Minds” award 2021 in “Life Sciences” by Manager Magazin and Merck. In 2016, he was a visiting professor in Prof. Paolo Bonato’s Motion Analysis Lab at Harvard Medical School (February-March), and in 2018, he was a visiting professor in Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland’s Human Dynamics group at MIT Media Lab (March-August). He serves as Area Editor for the “IEEE Open Access Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology” and Associate Editor for the “IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics”. He is also active in the organization of several IEEE and ACM meetings (e.g., BSN, BHI, EMBC, IJCAI, ISWC, UbiComp), most recently as General Chair of BHI 2023.

Bjoern Eskofier has defined his research and entrepreneurial agenda to revolve around contributions to a “Digital Health Ecosystem”, where patients are connected to other stakeholders within the Healthcare system using digital support tools. His digital health research philosophy is that only multidisciplinary teams of engineers, medical experts, industry representatives, and entrepreneurs will have the tools to actually implement changes in Healthcare.