Head of Research Department Systems AI for Robot Learning
Prof. Dr. Jan Peters
Organizational unit
Systems AI for Robot Learning
Address
(Darmstadt)
Publications
Profile
Since 2022, Professor Jan Peters is head of research department Systemic AI for Learning Robots at DFKI. Furthermore, he teaches and conducts research at the Department of Computer Science at Technical University Darmstadt. He is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of machine learning for autonomous intelligent robots and has been recognized for his achievements by the Dick Volz Best 2007 US Ph.D. Thesis Runner-Up Award, the Robotics: Science & Systems - Early Career Spotlight, the International Neural Network Society Young Investigator Award, the IEEE Robotics & Automation Early Career Award, and an ERC Starting Grant, among others. He was named an IEEE fellow in 2019 and an ELLIS fellow in 2021.
Although Jan Peters has only been a professor since 2011, graduates of his institute can already be found at nearly every top address in the world: as rising executives at Google, Facebook, and Amazon, as post-docs at Berkeley and MIT, and as professors at leading universities in the US, the UK, Holland, and Japan.
Prof. Peters studied Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering at TU Munich, FernUni Hagen, the National University of Singapore (NUS), and the University of Southern California (USC), earning several degrees: two Master's, Diplom-Informatiker, Diplom-Ingenieur, and a Ph.D. degree. His research career includes other positions at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Advanced Telecommunication Research Center in Japan, and Siemens Advanced Engineering in Singapore. He has led research groups on machine learning for robotics at the Max Planck Institutes for Biological Cybernetics (2007-2010) and Intelligent Systems (2010-2021).
Academic Career
2011 – now | Full professor (W3), Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS), Faculty for Computer Science, Technical University Darmstadt | ||
2022 – now | Head of Department Systems AI for Robot Learning (SAIROL), German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) | ||
2011 – 2021 | Interdepart. Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems | ||
2007 – 2010 | Senior Research Scientist/Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics | ||
2001 – 2007 | Graduate Research Assistant, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA | ||
2000 + 2003 | Visiting Researcher, Advanced Telecommunication Research Center ATR, Kyoto, Japan |
Doctorate
2007 | Supervisors: Prof. Stefan Schaal, Prof. Firdaus Udwadia, Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Southern California, USA |
Degree programmes
2004 – 2005 | M.Sc. Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, USA | ||
2001 – 2002 | M.Sc. Computer Science, University of Southern California, USA | ||
2000 – 2001 | Visiting student Mechatronics, National University of Singapore | ||
1996 – 2002 | Diplom-Ingenieur Electrical Engineering, TU München, Germany | ||
1996 – 2002 | Diplom-Informatiker, Fern-Universität Hagen, Germany |
- 2022 EIC Transition Grant VRP
- 2021 AIAI Fellow, Amazon Research Award
- 2020 ELLIS Fellow
- 2019 IEEE Fellow
- 2016 - 2021 ERC Starting Grant Skills4Robots
- 2013 Young Investigator Award of the International Neural Networks Society (INNS), Early Career Award of the IEEE (Robotics & Automation Society RAS)
- 2012 Early Career Spotlight at Robotics: Science & Systems
- 2011 Dick Volz Best 2007 U.S. Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Runner-Up Award
- 2011 - 2021 Ph.D. Advisor to two Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Awards (M. Lutter, J. Kober) and two Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Finalists (O.Kroemer, R. Lioutikov)
- seit 2008 22 Best Paper Awards / Finalist or similar awards
Scientific Leadership
- since 2020 Founding Member of Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence hessian.AI
- since 2019 Founding Director, ELLIS Robot Learning: Closing the Reality Gap!
- 2011 - 2013 Programme Manager, PASCAL2 Thematic Programme: Cognitive Architectures & Robotics
- 2008 - 2012 Founding Chair, IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robot Learning with N. Roy (MIT), R. Tedrake (MIT), J. Morimoto (ATR)
Services to the Community
- 2018 Program Chair, International Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL)
- 2017 Program Chair, IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robotics
- 2014 - 2017 Editor, IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
- since 2013 Action Editor Journal of Machine Learning Research (JLMR)
- 2011–2015 Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRo)
- since 2007 Reviewer for the national science foundations of Austria, Belgium, Canada, ERC, EU-ICT, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, USA, Slovenia, Switzerland
- since 2007 Administration, robotics-worldwide, Main robotics mailing list with ∼25.000 members with Stefan Schaal, Michael Mistry and since 2015 also Tamim Asfour