Distinguished Service Award 2026

Professor Luc de Raedt has been awarded the EurAI Distinguished Service Award 2026 for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through sustained service in scientific research, shaping and organising scientific processes on the European and international level, and unifying research communities.

Luc De Raedt is a member of the Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence (BNVKI), and is a fellow of EurAI, AAAI and ELLIS.

He was a driving force behind the merger of the Belgian AI Community and the Dutch AI Association into the Belgian-Dutch Association for AI (BNVKI), which eventually became the Benelux Association for AI.
On the European level, Luc initiated the systematic collocation (and ultimately the merger) of the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) and European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD) into ECML/PKDD.
He has chaired the European and international top conferences on Machine Learning and AI (ECML 1994, ECML/PKDD 2001, ICML 2005, ECAI 2012, IJCAI 2022), has organised many other international events (ILP 1995, ESSAI 2026), and co-organised many workshops at conferences. Luc has also coordinated multiple EU projects that integrated people from several areas of AI, including machine learning, databases, and constraint solving.

Finally, Luc has served on many committees and has held many important positions of trust: Founding member of the International Machine Learning Society (IMLS); member of the Board of BNVKI and ECCAI (1996-1998); Former Trustee of IJCAI, among many other positions on advisory committees and editorial boards. In conclusion, Luc De Raedt has had a tremendous and long-lasting impact on the European AI community through his commitment to service.

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