Prof. Dr. Jan Peters

Head of Research Department Systems AI for Robot Learning

Organizational unit Systems AI for Robot Learning

Contact

Publications

Théo Vincent; Alberto Maria Metelli; Boris Belousov; Jan Peters; Marcello Restelli; Carlo D’Eramo

In: Proceedings of the 38th Annual AAAi Conference on Artificial Intelligence. AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-24), February 20-27, Vancouver, Canada, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2024.

Niklas Funk; Paul Otto Müller; Boris Belousov; Anton Savchenko; Rolf Findeisen; Jan Peters

In: Embracing Contacts - Workshop at ICRA 2023. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA-2023), located at ICRA 2023, June 2, London, United Kingdom, IEEE, 5/2023.

Michael Lutter; Boris Belousov; Shie Mannor; Dieter Fox; Animesh Garg; Jan Peters

In: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), Vol. 45, No. 5, Pages 5534-5548, IEEE, 2023.

All 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