Medical University of Vienna
Matthias Samwald is Associate Professor at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the Medical University of Vienna. He leads Accelerate Europe, an initiative aimed at ensuring that Europe is prepared for the AI revolution that could transform science, the economy and governance within this decade. He makes the case that Europe can turn its traditions of accountability, cooperation, and shared prosperity into competitive advantages, if it also matches them with the ambition and speed that the current situation demands.
Samwald uniquely combines frontier AI policy experience with technical research depth. He co-chaired the Safety & Security chapter of the EU General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, working alongside co-chairs including Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio, creating the world’s first safety and security framework for the most powerful AI models. The framework has since been adopted by most major frontier AI developers and is visibly shaping how the most advanced models are built. Samwald is also a member of the EU Frontier AI Expert Forum, where he advises on European frontier AI strategy.
His academic work spans AI, biomedical informatics, knowledge representation and cognitive science, and he has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles. Previously, he co-led a €15 million EU Horizon 2020 initiative that deployed AI-driven personalised medicine across seven European countries. His work has consistently focused on how powerful technologies can be directed towards broad human benefit, ranging from personalised medicine to the governance of the most advanced AI systems.