PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jochen Britz

Jochen Britz is a senior software engineer at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) who designs and manages SEMLA, an on-premises environment for research with highly sensitive personal data. He began working in DFKI's Cognitive Assistants research department in 2012, completed a master's degree at Saarland University in 2013, and coauthored a 2014 paper on recognizing home appliances by their sounds. In 2022, he moved to the software engineering track to build secure research environments, and he coauthored a SEMLA white paper with Jan Alexandersson, Valentin Seimetz and Daniel Tabellion, dated December 2022. A Saarland University lecture series hosted his SEMLA talk with Alexandersson in June 2023. As of October 2026, he is a senior software engineer in DFKI's Cognitive Assistants Department in Saarbrücken, responsible for the design and management of SEMLA.

Now at
DFKI

Timeline

  1. 2012

    Cognitive Assistants researcher at DFKI

    In 2012, he starts work in the Cognitive Assistants research department at DFKI, formerly known as Intelligent User Interfaces, and becomes a researcher in the Competence Center Ambient Assisted Living (CCAAL). His ambient assisted living projects include SUCH, Mobia and AdAPT.

  2. 2013

    Master's at Saarland University

    He completes a master's degree in the engineering course Computer and Communication Technology at Saarland University in 2013, with honors.

  3. 2014

    Recognizing devices by sound

    The 2014 European Conference on Ambient Intelligence in Eindhoven carries his coauthored paper "Analyzing Sounds of Home Environment for Device Recognition," written with Svilen Dimitrov, Boris Brandherm and Jochen Frey. The work recognizes home appliances from their acoustic fingerprints with supervised learning and extends to devices running at the same time with semi-supervised learning.

  4. 2022

    Software engineering track at DFKI

    A move to the software engineering track in 2022 shifts his focus to implementing secure research environments at DFKI.

  5. December 2022

    The SEMLA white paper

    In December 2022, he coauthors the SEMLA white paper "An On-Premises Trusted Research Environment for AI-based R&D with Sensitive Personal Information" with Jan Alexandersson, Valentin Seimetz and Daniel Tabellion. SEMLA sorts data into six sensitivity levels, each with its own technical and organizational measures.

  6. June 2023

    A lecture on SEMLA

    In June 2023, he and Jan Alexandersson speak in the Saarland University lecture series "Perspektiven der IT-Sicherheit und der KI" on SEMLA, a collection of technical and organisational measures for a GDPR compliant on-premise platform for research with very sensitive personal data.

  7. As of October 2026

    Senior software engineer at DFKI

    As of October 2026, he is a senior software engineer in the Cognitive Assistants Department at DFKI in Saarbrücken, where he has worked since 2012. He is responsible for the design and management of SEMLA and its projects, and his research interests are security architectures of software platforms for ambient assisted living, digital health, smart home, smart energy and smart services.

Career

  1. Since 2012DFKIResearcher

Education

  1. 2013Saarland UniversityMaster's degree

From the biography.

  1. Nonprofit roles are 2.3 times as common in AI safetyIncludes DFKI. We estimate where people focused on safety, alignment and evaluation work. Nonprofit roles appear for 25.1% of safety people with known affiliations, compared with 11.0% in other areas.
  2. The top 10 organizations employed 22% of people shaping AI in 2025: 51% of company researchers and 21% of university researchersIncludes DFKI. We estimate the share of people shaping AI who worked at the top 10 organizations each year from 1955 to 2025, comparing concentration across companies, universities, and institutes and labs.
  3. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes DFKI. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes DFKI. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Jochen Britz yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Team – Social, Cognitive and Affective AI scaai.dfki.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Persons – The Competence Center for Ambient Assisted Living ccaal.dfki.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Analyzing Sounds of Home Environment for Device Recognition av.dfki.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. White paper – SEMLA semla.dfki.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Ringvorlesung: Perspektiven der IT-Sicherheit und der KI umtl.cs.uni-saarland.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Jochen Britz · GitLab gitlab.com. Checked 21 October 2026.