Business Bio

Christoph Trattner is a global leader in Responsible AI with more than 20 years of industry experience building innovative solutions in data science and recommender systems. He is a Full Professor at the University of Bergen and Director of the Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation (SFI MediaFutures), where he leads transformative AI projects that help businesses address societal challenges—from promoting healthier consumer choices to combating misinformation in media.

Trattner’s work bridges academia and industry, delivering practical AI applications for startups and multinational corporations. He has led research-driven projects with companies across Europe and the United States, securing over 650 million NOK as PI and Co-PI, including the MediaFutures centre (≈ €26 million). His expertise in recommender systems and behavioral analytics has enabled innovations in health, food, and media, resulting in 150+ publications in venues such as Nature Food, ACM UMAP, and The Web Conference (WWW).

He collaborates with leading media and health-tech firms in the Nordics and internationally, steering innovations that align technology with societal benefit. An ACM Senior Member and ACM Distinguished Speaker, Trattner also contributes to industry standards and scholarly discourse through editorial roles at AI and Ethics (Springer) and Online Social Networks and Media (Elsevier). He is committed to harnessing AI to create value for businesses and society—delivering solutions that are ethical, scalable, and impactful.

Academic Bio

Christoph Trattner is a Full Professor at the University of Bergen, where he leads the Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology & Innovation (SFI MediaFutures) and the DARS research group, Norway’s largest recommender systems research group. His mission is to advance Responsible AI, developing innovative solutions in data science and recommender systems to promote healthier food choices, combat misinformation in media, and enhance user trust in AI technologies. With over 150 publications in top-tier venues like NATURE Food, NATURE Sustainability, Communications of the ACM, and The Web Conference (WWW), he drives interdisciplinary research at the intersection of AI, psychology, and media studies to address pressing societal challenges.

As PI and Co-PI, he has secured over 650 million NOK in funding for projects like MediaFutures (26 million EUR), driving large-scale research on responsible media and health-focused AI systems. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including a Best Paper Award Honorable Mention at The Web Conference (WWW’17), and inclusion in ACM Computing Reviews’ Best of Computing for VizRec (2017).

He holds a PhD, MSc, and BSc (all with distinction) in Computer Science and Telematics from Graz University of Technology, is an ACM Senior Member, and a former fellow of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), Marshall Plan Foundation, and ERCIM. His academic journey includes appointments at Graz University of Technology, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, with visiting research at Yahoo! Labs Barcelona and CWI Amsterdam. With over 20 years of industry experience, he has led research-driven projects for startups and multinational corporations, fostering AI innovations that bridge academia and industry.

As an ACM Distinguished Speaker and senior program committee member for top-tier conferences like ACM RecSys, SIGIR, and UMAP, he actively shapes the field of AI and recommender systems. He has co-chaired workshops such as HealthRecSys and MSM, and served as program co-chair for MMM2023, fostering global collaboration in responsible AI research. He also serves on the editorial boards of Online Social Networks and Media (Elsevier) and AI and Ethics (Springer), and advises innovative startups like preforma and caneat.

He is driven by a passion to harness AI for societal good, from healthier diets to trustworthy media.

Latest News

• [08/2025] Great news, 6 papers in workshops at ACM RecSys 2025 have been accepted for publication and presentation by our PhD and MA students :)
• [07/2025] Happy summer holidays :)
• [05/2025] Happy to share that "The role of GPT as an adaptive technology in climate change journalism." has been accepted at ACM UMAP 2025 as a full paper. PDF
• [05/2025] Happy top share that MediaFutures passed its midway evaluation with flying colors!
• [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

• Hope, Fear, or Anger? How Emotional Framing in a News Recommender System Guides User Preferences. Eknes-Riple, J., Hua, J., Jeng, J., Starke, A. D., Seddik, K. M. A., and Trattner, C. INRA Workshop at ACM RecSys 2025, 2025.
• More of the Same? A Longitudinal Evaluation of Two Similarity-based Approaches in a News Recommender System. El Majjodi, A., Trattner, C., Holtan, J. B., and Starke, A. INRA Workshop at ACM RecSys 2025, 2025.
• Using Large Language Models to ‘Lighten the Mood’: Satirically Reframing News Recommendations to Reduce News Avoidance. Wessel, T., Trattner, C., and Starke, A. INRA Workshop at ACM RecSys 2025, 2025.
• Evaluating Image Trust Labels in a News Recommender System: Assessing the impact of visual trust indicators for images on user trust and interpretation. Forstner, S. L., Lysova, Y., Starke, A. D., and Trattner, C. INRA Workshop at ACM RecSys 2025, 2025.
• Nudging Healthy Choices: Leveraging LLM-Generated Hashtags and Explanations in Personalised Food Recommendations. El Majjodi, A., Trattner, C., Starke, A., Petruzzelli, A., and Musto, C. IntRS at ACM Recsys 2025, 2025.
• LLM-based Healthiness? Analyzing the Nutritional Quality of an AI-Generated Recipe Dataset. El Majjodi, A., Trattner, C., Holtan, J. B., and Starke, A. RecSoGood at ACM Recsys 2025, 2025.
• The role of GPT as an adaptive technology in climate change journalism. Jeng, J., Kasangu, G., Starke, A., Seddik, K. and Trattner, C. ACM UMAP, 2025. PDF
• 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