He was CEO and Scientific Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and full professor of computer science at Saarland University, Saarbrücken.

Wahlster remains Chief Executive Advisor of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence.

[1] In May 2019, he was honored by the Gesellschaft für Informatik as one of 10 most important heads of German artificial intelligence history.

From 1972 to 1977 he studied computer science and theoretical linguistics at the University of Hamburg, where he received his diploma in 1977.

[8] In 2020, Wahlster was awarded an honorary title doctor honoris causa of Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague[9] and in 2021 elected as an honorary foreign member of the Engineering Academy of the Czech Republic (EACR).