Academic Bio

Driven by my mission to improve our lives through responsible AI that transforms the way we consume food and media, I currently serve as a Lead Professor (1404) at the University of Bergen (UiB). I am the Founder and Center Director of the Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation (SFI MediaFutures), which has secured around 300 million NOK in funding and in-kind contributions. Additionally, I lead the DARS research group, Norway’s largest Recommender Systems research group.

I earned my PhD (with distinction), MSc (with distinction), and BSc in Computer Science and Telematics from Graz University of Technology in Austria. An ACM Senior Member, I have received prestigious fellowships from organizations such as the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), the Marshall Plan Foundation, and the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). Prior to joining UiB, I held academic appointments at Graz University of Technology, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and pursued visiting research at Yahoo! Labs in Barcelona and CWI in Amsterdam.

My research focuses on developing new forms of Responsible AI technology, and software in particular, employing methods from data science and recommender systems. Since 2009, I have published more than 150 papers in leading venues—including NATURE Food, NATURE Sustainability, JASIST, IPM, UMUAI, WWW, AAAI ICWSM, ACM SIGIR, and ACM RecSys—and secured over 650 million NOK in research funding, with 365 million NOK as Principal Investigator. My work has been recognized with multiple Best Paper/Poster Awards and Honorable Mentions, notably at the CORE A* ranked The Web Conference in 2017.

Active in the international research community, I serve as a senior PC member for several top-tier conferences and have co-organized and chaired events such as ACM RecSys (Workshop/Late-Breaking Results/Tutorials, 2018–2020 & 2024), MMM2023, and the HealthRecSys workshop series. I also sit on editorial boards for Springer’s Journal of Intelligent Information Systems and AI and Ethics. Beyond academia, I serve on the board of preforma—a pioneering Norwegian health-tech start-up focused on women’s health—and previously sat on the board of Media City Bergen, Norway’s largest media cluster. In addition, I advise various tech start-ups.

Since 2009, I have taught more than 2,000 students across 35+ courses at the BSc, MSc, MBA, and PhD levels in Austria and Norway, and have supervised over 40 Master’s and PhD theses. In June 2021, I was appointed as an ACM Distinguished Speaker—one of only two in Norway. Through my teaching, research, and leadership roles, I remain committed to advancing responsible AI that positively shapes the way we consume both food and media.

Business Bio

I am a Lead Professor at the University of Bergen, where I founded and currently direct the Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation (SFI MediaFutures). I also lead DARS, Norway's largest research group specializing in Recommender Systems. My academic foundation includes a PhD, MSc, and BSc in Computer Science from Graz University of Technology, complemented by a range of international academic and visiting appointments.

With over 20 years of industry experience, my research focuses on Responsible AI within the fields of Data Science and Recommender Systems. I have successfully led and managed numerous large-scale, research-driven industry projects with a combined value of over 650 million NOK. These projects have supported organizations of all sizes—from start-ups to multinational corporations—in developing cutting-edge AI products and services that drive innovation and growth.

Latest News

• [04/2025] Happy to share that "Decoding Global Palates: Unveiling Cross-Cultural Flavor Preferences Through Online Recipes" has been accepted and published Foods journal. PDF
• [01/2025] Our paper "Supporting healthier food choices through AI-tailored advice: A research agenda" has been accepted and published in Elsevier's PEC Innovation journal. PDF
• [01/2025] Our paper "Evaluating Sequential Recommendations in the Wild: A Case Study on Offline Accuracy, Click Rates, and Consumption" has been accepted at ECIR 2025. PDF
• [10/2024] I’m thrilled to share that three papers lead by our PhD students have been accepted at the INRA and HealthRecsys workshops in this year's ACM RecSys 2024 conference in Bari!
• [09/2024] Happy to share that our paper "Advancing Visual Food Attractiveness Predictions for Healthy Food Recommender Systems" has been accepted at the HealthRecsys workshop at ACM RecSys 2024.
• [08/2024] Our paper "Examining the merits of feature-specific similarity functions in the news domain using human judgments" has been published in Springer's UMUAI journal. PDF
• [07/2024] Happy holidays :)
• [06/2024] Fantastic to hear that our MediaFutures PhD candidate Anastasiia Klimashevskaia has gotten a Level 2 journal (highest journal ranking in Norway) accepted based on her PhD work.
• [06/2024] In total, we got 4 papers accepted at ACM UMAP 2024! Read the news here :)
• [04/2024] Nice to hear that our Workshop proposal on Health Recommender Systems with Helma Torkamaan, Hanna Hauptmann and myself as organisers has been accepted at ACM Recsys 2024 as a full day workshop! Stay tuned for the call for papers :)
• [03/2024] Great to hear that our paper "Shaping the Future of Content-based News Recommenders Insights from Evaluating Feature-Specific Similarity Metrics" with our MA student Daniel Roses as first author and co-authored/supervised by Alain Starke and myself has been accepted to ACM UMAP 2024 as a Full Paper!
• [02/2024] Great to hear that our MediaFutures: Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation opinion paper co-authored by Nick Diakopoulos, Christoph Trattner, Dietmar Jannach, Irene Costera Meijer and Enrico Motta, entitled "Leveraging Professional Ethics for Responsible AI: Applying AI techniques to journalism." is finally online and published in Communications of the ACM! PDF
• [01/2024] Happy new year!
• [2023 - 2012] For older news, check the source code!

Latest 10 Publications

• Decoding Global Palates: Unveiling Cross-Cultural Flavor Preferences Through Online Recipes. Zhang, Q., Elsweiler, D. and Trattner, C. Foods, 2025. PDF
• Evaluating Sequential Recommendations in the Wild: A Case Study on Offline Accuracy, Click Rates, and Consumption. Klimashevskaia, A., Alvsvåg, S., Trattner, C., Starke, A., Tessem, A., and Jannach, D. Springer, ECIR, 2025. PDF
• Supporting healthier food choices through AI-tailored advice: A research agenda. Starke, A., Dierkes, J., Arslan Lied, G., Kasangu, G. and Trattner, C. PEC Innovation, Elsevier. 2025. PDF
• Empowering Editors: How Automated Recommendations Support Editorial Article Curation. Klimashevskaia, A., Elahi, M., Jannach, D., Trattner, C. & Buodd, S. INRA Workshop at ACM Recsys 2024, 2024. PDF
• Negativity Sells? Using an LLM to Affectively Reframe News Articles in a Recommender System. Jeng, J., Kasangu, G., Starke, A., Knudsen, E. & Trattner, C. HealthRecsys Workshop at ACM Recsys 2024, 2024. PDF
• Advancing Visual Food Attractiveness Predictions for Healthy Food Recommender Systems. El Majjodi, A., Khan, S., Starke, A., Elahi, M. & Trattner, C. INRA Workshop at ACM Recsys 2024, 2024. PDF
• Examining the merits of feature-specific similarity functions in the news domain using human judgments. Starke, A., Solberg, V., Øverhaug, S. and Trattner, C. UMUAI, 2024. PDF
• A Survey on Popularity Bias in Recommender Systems. Klimashevskaia, A., Jannach, D., Elahi, M. and Trattner, C. UMUAI, 2024. PDF
• Shaping the Future of Content-based News Recommenders: Insights from Evaluating Feature-Specific Similarity Metrics. Rosnes, D. Starke, A. & Trattner, C. ACM UMAP 2024, 2024. PDF
• Incorporating Editorial Feedback in the Evaluation of News Recommender Systems. Mahmood, B. Elahi, M., Touileb, S., Steskal, L. & Trattner, C. ACM UMAP 2024 LBR, 2024. PDF

Copyright © 2025 Christoph Trattner (Last updated: April 28th, 2025)