Ralf Herbrich leads the group on Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability at the Hasso-Plattner Institute in Potsdam since May 2022 where he is also one of the co-managing directors. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Builder Platform & Artificial Intelligence at Zalando (2020–2022), Managing Director of the Amazon Development Center in Germany with its locations in Berlin, Dresden, Aachen and Tübingen and was Director of Machine Learning at Amazon in Berlin from (2013–2020). Prior to these roles at Amazon, he led Facebook’s Unified Ranking and Allocation team in 2011. From 2000 to 2011, he served as Director of Microsoft's Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Lab UK and worked for nine years at Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, UK. Since 2024, Ralf is also a member of the supervisory board of SAP.
Ralf has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and holds over 50 patents. He holds a PhD in Statistics from Technical University of Berlin and obtained his Diploma in Computer Science from the same institution. His research interests include Bayesian inference and decision making, natural language processing, computer vision, learning theory, robotics, distributed systems and programming languages. Ralf is one of the inventors of the Drivatars™ system in the Forza Motorsport series as well as the TrueSkill™ ranking and matchmaking system in Xbox Live.