People / Gerhard Widmer

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Gerhard Widmer

Gerhard Widmer

Gerhard Widmer (born 1961) seemed predestined to make a career as a pianist when he won the first prize in a national piano competition in 1974. At age 15 however he decided against it because he felt Beet¬hoven was boring. He read IT at Vienna’s Technological University and Computer Science and Music at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA). In 2004 he became Professor and Head of the Institute for Computational Perception at the Johannes Kepler Universität Linz. Worldwide, Widmer is one of the pioneers of interdisciplinary research at the interface between IT, AI and music. He has received several national and international prizes for his work, including the 1 million euro START Prize in 1998, one of Austria’s top research awards. His attitude to Beethoven has undergone significant modifications in the meantime.