Ph.D. Graduates at IAS

  1. Dr. The Duy Nguyen-Tuong ('11), Thesis on Model Learning in Robot Control advised by Jan Peters but with evaluators Martin Riedmiller, Bernhard Schölkopf at Uni Freiburg, Research Engineer at Bosch Center for AI, IROS Best Paper Award Finalist.
  2. Prof. Dr. Jens Kober ('12), Thesis on Learning Motor Skills: From Algorithms to Robot Experiments with external evaluator Stefan Schaal (formerly USC and Max Planck for Intelligent Systems), Post-Doc@HRI+Uni Bielefeld, Associate Prof@TU Delft, Winner of the Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award, the IEEE RAS Early Career Award, and the R:SS Early Career Spotlight.
  3. Dr. Katharina Mülling ('13), Thesis on Modeling and Learning of Complex Motor Tasks: A Case Study with Robot Table Tennis with external evaluator Tamim Asfour (KIT), Post-Doc and Systems Scientist@Carnegie Mellon University, Research Scientist/Google X, Winner of the Best Computer Science Ph.D. Thesis Award at TU Darmstadt
  4. Dr. Zhikun Wang ('13), Thesis on Intention Inference and Decision Making with Hierarchical Gaussian Process Dynamics Model with external evaluator Bernhard Schölkopf (MPI-IS),
  5. Prof. Dr. Oliver Kroemer ('15), Thesis on Machine Learning for Robot Grasping and Manipulation with external evaluator Oliver Brock (TU Berlin), Postdoc/University of Southern California, Professor/Carnegie Mellon University, ICINCO Best Paper Award, Runner-Up to the Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award
  6. Dr. Christian Daniel ('16), Thesis on Learning Hierarchical Policies from Human Feedback with external evaluator Chris Watkins (Royal Holloway),
  7. Prof. Dr. Herke van Hoof ('16), Thesis on Machine Learning through Exploration for Perception-Driven Robotics with external evaluator Marc Toussaint (then Stuttgart University, today TU Berlin),
  8. Prof. Dr. Roberto Calandra ('16), Thesis on Bayesian Modeling for Optimization and Control in Robotics with external evaluator Michael A. Osborne (Oxford University),
  9. Dr. Julia Vinogradska ('17), Thesis on Gaussian Processes in Reinforcement Learning: Stability Analysis and Efficient Value Propagation with external evaluator Carl Rasmussen (University of Cambridge), Winner of the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring Award.
  10. Dr. Simon Manschitz ('17), Thesis on Learning Sequential Skills for Robot Manipulation Tasks with external evaluator Aude Billard (EPFL),
  11. Dr. Alexandros Paraschos ('17), Thesis on Robot Skill Representation, Learning and Control with Probabilistic Movement Primitives with external evaluators Gerhard Neumann (then Lincoln University, now KIT) and Sylvain Calinon (IDIAP+EPFL),
  12. Prof. Dr. Zhengkun Yi ('17), joint NTU-TU Darmstadt PhD student joint first supervision by Yilei Zhang and Jan Peters
  13. Prof. Dr. Rudolf Lioutikov ('18), Thesis on Parsing Motion and Composing Behavior for Semi-Autonomous Manipulation with external evaluator Ken Goldberg (University of California in Berkeley), Runner-Up to the Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award
  14. Prof. Dr. Filipe Veiga ('18), Thesis on Toward Dextrous In-Hand Manipulation through Tactile Sensing with external evaluator Veronika Santos (University of California in Los Angeles),
  15. Dr. Okan Koç ('18), Thesis on Optimal Trajectory Generation and Learning Control for Robot Table Tennis with external evaluator Sethu Vijayakumar (University of Edinburgh),
  16. Dr. Dieter Büchler ('19), Thesis on Robot Learning for Muscular Systems with external evaluator Tamim Asfour (KIT),
  17. Dr. Marco Ewerton ('19), Thesis on Bidirectional Human-Robot Learning: Imitation and Skill Improvement with external evaluator Masaki Takahashi (Keio University),
  18. Dr. Gregor H.W. Gebhardt ('19), Thesis on Using Mean Embeddings for State Estimation and Reinforcement Learning advised by former junior professor and external evaluator Gerhard Neumann (then Lincoln University, now KIT),
  19. Dr. Sebastian Gomez-Gonzalez ('19), Thesis on Real Time Probabilistic Models for Robot Trajectories with external evaluator Petar Kormushev (Imperial College London),
  20. Dr. Simone Parisi ('19), Thesis on Reinforcement Learning with Sparse and Multiple Rewards with external evaluator Joschka Boedecker (Freiburg University),
  21. Dr. Oleg Arenz ('20), Thesis on Sample-Efficient I-Projections for Robot Learning advised by former junior professor and external evaluator Gerhard Neumann (KIT),
  22. Dr. Roberto Lampariello ('20), Thesis on Optimal Motion Planning for Object Interception and Grasping with external evaluator Klaus Schilling (Würzburg University),
  23. Dr. Daniel Tanneberg ('20), Thesis on Understand-Compute-Adapt: Neural Networks for Intelligent Agents with external evaluator Martin Riedmiller (formerly University of Freiburg, Google Deepmind), Permanent Research Scientist at Honda Research Institute
  24. Dr. Dorothea Koert ('20), Thesis on Interactive Machine Learning for Assistive Robots with external evaluator Heni Ben Amor (Arizona State University), BMBF Independent Research Group Leader of IKIDA, Winner of the Best Computer Science Ph.D. Thesis Award at TU Darmstadt
  25. Prof. Dr. Samuele Tosatto ('20), Thesis on Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning for Robotics with external evaluator Martha White (University of Alberta)
  26. Dr. Stefan Loeckel ('21), Thesis on Machine Learning for Modeling and Analyzing of Race Car Drivers with external evaluator Chris Gerdes (Stanford University).
  27. Dr. Hany Abdulsamad ('21), Thesis on Statistical Machine Learning for Modeling and Control of Stochastic Structured Systems with external evaluator Thomas Schön (Uppsala University).
  28. Dr. Fabio Muratore ('21), Thesis on Randomizing Physics Simulations for Robot Learning with external evaluator Fabio Ramos (University of Sydney).
  29. Dr. Michael Lutter ('21), Thesis on Inductive Biases for Machine Learning in Robotics and Control with external evaluator Russ Tedrake (MIT), Researcher at Boston Dynamics, Winner of the Best European Robotics Ph.D. Thesis Award
  30. Dr. Boris Belousov ('22), Thesis on On Optimal Behavior Under Uncertainty in Humans and Robots with external evaluator Marc Toussaint (TU Berlin)
  31. Dr. Tuan Dam ('22), Thesis on Sample Efficient Monte Carlo Tree Search for Robotics with external evaluator Csaba Szepesvari (University of Alberta)
  32. Dr. Philip Becker-Ehmck ('22), Thesis on Latent State-Space Models for Control with external evaluator Marco Hutter (ETH Zürich)
  33. Dr. Alexander Cowen Rivers ('22), Thesis on Pushing The Limits of Sample-Efficient Optimisation with external evaluators Frank Hutter (Uni Freiburg) and Haitham Bou Ammar (UCL/Huawei)
  34. Dr. Hamish Flynn ('23), Thesis on PAC-Bayesian Bandit Algorithms With Guarantees with external evaluators Benjamin Guedj (UCL+INRIA) and Melih Kandemir (University of Southern Denmark)
  35. Dr. Andreas Look ('23), Thesis on Deterministic Approximations for Deep State-Space Models with external evaluators David Duvenaud (University of Toronto) and Melih Kandemir (University of Southern Denmark).
  36. Dr. Pascal Klink ('23), Thesis on Reinforcement Learning Curricula as Interpolations between Task Distributions with external evaluators Peter Stone (University of Texas at Austin) and Joni Pajarinen (Aalto University).
  37. Dr. Vignesh Prasad ('23), Thesis on Learning Human-Robot Interaction: A Case Study on Human-Robot Handshaking with additional evaluator Ruth Stock-Homburg and external evaluator Yue Hu (University of Waterloo).
  38. Dr. Julen Urain de Jesus ('23), Thesis on Deep Generative Models for Motion Planning and Control with external evaluator Katerina Fragkiadaki (CMU).