Curriculum

Academic Career

2013 - present: Research scientist at Google DeepMind, London in various roles:
2013 Scientific consultant
2015 Team Lead Controls Team
2018 Research Director
Project highlights: Atari, Robotics, Fusion plasma control, data-efficient Reinforcement Learning
2011: Research Stay at CSIRO, Sydney (Grant for Distinguished Scientists)
2010 - 2015: Co-Founder Cognit - Lab for learning machines GmbH
2009 - 2015: Professor (W3) for Machine Learning, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg
2006: Research Stay at Stanford University, Prof. Sebastian Thrun
2006: Research Stay at USC (University of Southern California), Prof. Stefan Schaal, LA
2003 - 2009: Professor (C4) for Neuroinformatics, University of Osnabrueck
2002 - 2003: Professor (C3) for Computational Intelligence, University of Dortmund
1999: Research Stay at GMD Research Center, Prof. Dr. K. Müller, Berlin
1998: Research Stay at Carnegie Mellon University, Prof. Andrew Moore, Pittsburgh
1997 - 2002: Research Assistant (C1), University of Karlsruhe
1996: Dissertation "Selbständig lernende neuronale Steuerungen", TH Karlsruhe, PhD, 'summa cum laude'
1992 - 1996: Research Assistant, University of Karlsruhe, research group Prof. Dr. Wolfram Menzel
1986 - 1992: Computer science study, Technical University of Karlsruhe, degree Diplom Informatiker ('sehr gut')
1984 - 1986: Game programming (Assembler) for ZX 81 and ZX Spectrum; several journal publications

2007: RL Competition, Cart Pole, 1st place
2007: Fbit, Jeju Island, South Korea, Best paper Award for 'Learning to Drive in 20 minutes'
2006: Entry in the Visitor Book of the Government of Lower Saxony
2006: Entry in the Golden Book of the city of Osnabrück
2006: University of Osnabrück, prize for major research impact
2003/2004: Univ. Dortmund, 2nd place Teaching Evaluation for "Introduction to AI"
RoboCup (Robotic Soccer) World Champion 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 [full table of placements]

2014: 7th Workshop on Guided-Self-Organisation, Freiburg (together w. Joschka Bödecker)
2009: Dagstuhl Seminar Algorithmic Methods for Cooperative Distributed Systems (together with S. Feteke, Univ. Braunschweig, S. Fischer, U. Lübeck, Suri Subash, Univ. California)
2006: Dagstuhl Seminar Multi-Robot Systems: Perception, Behaviors, Learning and Action (together with U. Schwiegelhohn, Univ. Dortmund, H.-D. Burkhard, HU Berlin, M. Veloso, CMU)
2005: NIPS Conference, Workshop on RL Benchmarking, Vancouver
2004: RoboCup Symposium as part of the World Championship in Lisbon
2003: Organizing Chair Simulation League RoboCup World Championship in Padua
2001: Organizing Committee Simulation League RoboCup World Championship in Seattle

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat Quantiom Bioinformatics (since 2002)
Trustee, RoboCup Federation (2008-2011)
German Sector RoboCup, Speaker Simulation League (2002-2011)
Executive Committee Member of RoboCup (2003-2007)
Speaker of AG Lernen, DFG-SPP 1125 (2000-2006)
VDI GMA Ausschuss Neuronale Netze und Evolutionaere Algorihmen (1996-2005)

Reviews for European Union and DFG (German Research Foundation)
Reviews for several journals, including: Neural Networks, Transaction on neural networks, Transactions on Robotics, Neuro Computing, IJNS, Transactions on Control and Cybernetics, …
Associate Editor/ Area Chair ICML 2009, ICRA 2009, IJCAI 2013
Program committee member for several annual conferences: IJCAI, NIPS, ICML, AAAI, AAMAS, ICRA, IROS, RoboCup Symposium, ECAI, IDA, …

2009: Robot Learning Summer School, Lisbon
2006: Reinforcement Learning, Interdisciplinary College Günne (IKG) (4 lectures)
2005: Lecture on Reinforcement Learning for Control, UvA Amsterdam (1 lecture)
2003: ACAI RoboCup Camp, Bremen (4 lectures)
2002: European Summer School on Cooperative Robotics, Lisbon (4 lectures)