Robert Trappl is head of the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna, which was founded in 1984. He is teaching obligatory and facultative courses and seminars, among them "Motivation, Emotion, Consciousness", "Science and Medicine", "IT-Systems for Persons with Special Needs", and "Love: A Multidisciplinary Approach" at the Vienna Medical University, and Cognitive Science at the University of Vienna. He was professor of Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence and head of the Institute of Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence, University of Vienna, for thirty years, and is now profesor emeritus at the Center for Brain Research at the Vienna Medical University.
He holds a PhD in psychology (minor: astronomy), a diploma in sociology (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna), and is engineer for electrical engineering.
He has published more than 180 articles, he is co-author, editor or co-editor of 35 books, among others "Advanced Topics in Artificial Intelligence", "Creating Personalities for Synthetic Actors", and "Multi-Agent Systems and Applications", these three Springer, Heidelberg/New York, "Emotions in Humans and Artifacts", MIT Press, 2003, "Agent Culture. Human-Agent Interaction in a Multicultural World", Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004, "Wissenschaft und Medizin", 7th ed. 2009, Facultas, Vienna, "Cybernetics and Systems 2010", ASCS, Vienna, and "Programming for Peace: Computer-Aided Methods for International Conflict Resolution and Prevention", Springer, Dordrecht, NL, 2006.
He is Editor-in-Chief of "Applied Artificial Intelligence: An International Journal" and "Cybernetics and Systems: An International Journal", both published by Taylor & Francis, USA. He is author of the 2 hour video series "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" (in German, Spektrum Videothek, Heidelberg). He has been on the editorial board of numerous scientific journals and has been a member of program committes of many national and international conferences.
His main research focus at present is the investigation of the potential contributions of Artificial Intelligence methods to the avoidance of outbreaks of wars or in ending them, and the development of intelligent and emotional personality agents both for synthetic actors in films, television, interactive media, especially games, and robots, and with a view on their consequences for theories on cognition and emotion.
He has been giving lectures in many countries and he has been working as a consultant for national and international companies and organizations (OECD, UNIDO, WHO).
