Matjaž Gams

Timeline

1. 1954–1989

   Chess endgames and a doctorate

   Born in Ljubljana in 1954, he completes an undergraduate degree at the University of Ljubljana in 1978 with a thesis on generating chess endgames. He coauthors "Error Analysis of the Minimax Principle" with Ivan Bratko in 1982 and earns his doctorate at Ljubljana in 1989 for work on the use of multiple models in machine learning.

2. 1997–2001

   A book on multiple knowledge

   In 1997, he co-edits Mind Versus Computer: Were Dreyfus and Winograd Right? with Marcin Paprzycki and Xindong Wu, and begins presiding over the organizing committee of the Information Society conference. His 2001 book Weak Intelligence: Through the Principle and Paradox of Multiple Knowledge sets out the principle of multiple knowledge, which holds that interactions are stronger than algorithms or equations.

3. 2004–2011

   Head of Intelligent Systems

   He becomes head of the Department of Intelligent Systems at the Jožef Stefan Institute in 2004 and sits on the institute's scientific council. In 2011, the University of Ljubljana appoints him a full professor.

4. 2010

   When not to look ahead

   With Ivan Bratko and their PhD student Mitja Luštrek, he researches pathology in heuristic search algorithms. In 2010, he coauthors "When is it better not to look ahead?" in the journal Artificial Intelligence with Dana Nau, Luštrek, Austin Parker and Bratko.

5. 2013–2021

   Wins at EvAAL and XPRIZE

   With the Ambient Intelligence group, he helps build RAReFall, a real-time activity recognition and fall detection system that wins first place at the EvAAL competition in 2013. His teams place first in continental Europe in the Tricorder competition in 2014 with a home health system, and first and second in the Sussex-Huawei competition at UbiComp in 2018. In March 2021, the department's JSI vs Covid team, with Gams as a member, wins second place and $250,000 in the XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge.

6. 2017–2022

   National councillor for science

   From 2017 to 2022, he serves as national councillor for science in the National Council, the upper house of the Slovenian Parliament. In 2018, he gives an invited lecture at the UN in Geneva on the danger of autonomous weapons.

7. 2025

   The HomeDOCtor medical chatbot

   With colleagues at the Department of Intelligent Systems, he develops HomeDOCtor, a Slovenian medical chatbot that combines retrieval-augmented generation with a database of curated medical guidelines. A July 2025 paper in Healthcare, with Gams as first author, reports on its six-month nationwide deployment. He showcases HomeDOCtor, which runs around the clock in Slovenia, in his opening keynote on superintelligence at MIPRO 2025.

8. As of October 2026

   Leading the agent systems group

   He heads the Agent and Multi-Agent Systems group in the Department of Intelligent Systems at the Jožef Stefan Institute. The group designs multi-agent systems, agents in smart cities and digital twins of humans that perform security or medical tasks.