Franz Kummert received the diploma and the Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) degree in computer science from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, in 1987 and 1991, respectively. In 1996 he received the venia legendi (Habilitation) in computer science from the Technical Faculty of the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Since 2002 he is a apl. professor for pattern recognition.

From 1987 to 1990 he worked at the research group for Pattern Recognition (Institut für Informatik, Mustererkennung) at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany. Since 1991, he is with the research group for Applied Computer Science (Angewandte Informatik) at the University of Bielefeld, Germany.

His fields of research are speech and image understanding and the applications of pattern understanding methods to natural science domains. He has published various papers in these fields, and is author of a book on the control of a speech understanding system and on the automatic interpretation of speech and image signals.

Dr. Kummert is Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).