Research Statement

Autonomous Robots have the potential to drastically change our everydays life, ranging from housekeeping, helping in the care for elder people or even work where human life is at risk. In order to make a step into this direction I am trying to use information theoretic reinforcement learning approaches as well as hierarchical learning to allow the robot to acquire a rich set of complex movement skills which should finally allow a robot to autonomously 'live' within an human environment.

Current Position:

  • Postdoctoral Fellow

Personal Status

  • Date of Birth : 04.05.1981
  • Place of Birth : Graz
  • Citizenship : Austria
  • Sex : Male

Employment

  • 2000-2001 : Software Engineer (Mathematica) at Edusoft
  • 2002-2004 : Tutor at the Institute for Computer Science, Graz University of Technology
  • 2005-2011 : Research Assistant at the Institute for Computer Science, Graz
  • 2011-now : Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, TU Darmstadt

Education

  • 1995-1999 : High School Certificate, Informatik - Bundes Oberstufen Real Gymnasium (BORG, High School), Deutschlandsberg
  • 1999-2005 : Diplom Ingenieur (M.Sc) in Telematics, Graz University of Technology
  • 2005-2012 : PhD Student, Graz University of Technology

Research Positions:

  • 2004-2005 : Student Researcher, Institute for Computer Science, Graz University of Technology
  • 2005-2011 : Research Assistant, Institute for Computer Science, Graz University of Technology
  • 2008 : Visiting Researcher, Max Plank Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen
  • 2011 - : Post-Doctoral Researcher, Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS), TU Darmstadt

Teaching :

2007 :

  • Computational Intelligence, Practical Course
  • Einführung in die Wissensverarbeitung, Practical Course

2008 :

  • Computational Intelligence, Practical Course
  • Einführung in die Wissensverarbeitung, Practical Course
  • Bakkulauriats-Projekt Telematik : Robotics and Machine Learning
  • 4 lectures for Computational Intelligence and Einführung in die Wissensverarbeitung

2009 :

  • Computational Intelligence, Practical Course
  • Einführung in die Wissensverarbeitung, Practical Course
  • 1 lecture for Einführung in die Wissensverarbeitung

2010 / 2011 :

  • Computational Intelligence, Practical Course
  • Einführung in die Wissensverarbeitung, Practical Course
  • 2 lectures for Machine Learning B

2005-2011 :

  • Supervised several Student Projects and Diploma Thesis

Master Thesis

  • The Reinforcement Learning Toolbox: Reinforcement Learning for Optimal Control Tasks, 2005

Reviews

2008 :

  • Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2008 (NIPS 2008)
  • Journal of Autonomous Robots, Special Issue on Robotic Learning

2009 :

  • Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2009 (NIPS 2009)

2011 :

  • Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2011 (NIPS 2011)
  • Journal of Autonomous Robots
  • International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2012)