University New External Member of University Council
1 July 2026
Computer linguist Prof. Dr Feiyu Xu has been appointed to the governing body
Ruperto Carola’s University Council has a new external member in the person of Prof. Dr Feiyu Xu. After the Senate of Heidelberg University endorsed the search committee’s nomination, the Baden-Württemberg Science Ministry announced her appointment retrospectively to 1 June 2026. The twelve-person University Council has five internal and seven external members. Their respective term of office is three years.
Computational linguist Feiyu Xu has been Professor of Industry AI at the German University of Digital Science in Potsdam since 2025. Her main research interest is the application of AI technologies to the intelligent transformation of modern industries. After earning her doctorate (2007) and habilitation (2015) at Saarland University she based her research at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and led the Text Analytics research group in the Language Technology Lab in Berlin. In 2017 she transferred to Lenovo as Vice President and headed the AI Lab at Lenovo Research. Between 2020 and 2023 she was Global Head of Artificial Intelligence at SAP SE, latterly in the position of Senior Vice President. Prof. Xu is on the supervisory or administrative boards of several companies, including Siemens Energy AG, ZF Friedrichshafen AG and FAZ GmbH. She has cofounded a number of AI startups. In addition, as an advisory board member of Global Neighbours she actively advocates for dialogue and mutual understanding between Europe, Asia and other parts of the world.
The University Council is one of the three central governing bodies of Heidelberg University, beside the Rectorate and the Senate. In accordance with the State Higher Education Act, it bears responsibility for the university’s development and proposes measures conducive to profile formation and enhancing its capacity for performance and competitiveness. Its most important tasks include electing the Rector and the Kanzler, deciding on structural and development plans, and adopting the annual financial statements of the university and the two medical faculties.