Professional Experience

• Since 2022: Chief Engineer and Principal Investigator at the Institute for Data Science Foundations at the Hamburg University of Technology.

• 2018 – 2021: Principal Investigator at the Knowledge Technology Group at the University of Hamburg, Germany

• 2017 – 2018: Postdoc at the Knowledge Technology Group at the University of Hamburg, Germany

• 2015 – 2017: Postdoc at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and University of California at Berkeley, California, USA

• 2014 – 2015: Postdoc at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

• 2010 – 2014: Doctoral research at the University of Bremen, Germany. Acquired doctorate in 2014 with summa cum laude degree.

• 2009 – 2010: Undergrad research at the University of Bremen, Germany, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)

Acquired Research Grants and Projects

• 2021 – € 502,250 – Initiator and coordinator of the project “Modeling a Robot’s Peripersonal Space and Body Schema for Adaptive Learning and Imitation (MoReSpace), jointly with Prof. Stefan Wermter. The project is part of the DFG priority programme “The Active Self” and funds two 3-year postdoctoral position at the University of Hamburg.

• 2020 – € 546,000 – Initiator and coordinator of the project “Learning Conversational Action Repair for Intelligent Robots” (LeCAREbot), jointly with Prof. Stefan Wermter. The project investigates neuro-semantic methods for conversational repair and language understanding.
• 2018 – € 351,400 – Initiator and coordinator of the project “Ideomotor Transfer for Active Self Emergence” (IDEAS), jointly with Prof. Stefan Wermter. The project is part of the DFG priority programme “The Active Self” and funds a 3-year postdoctoral position at the University of Hamburg.

• 2018 – € 100,000 – Initiator and coordinator of the project “The Neural Microcircuits of Problem-solving and Goal-directed Behavior”, jointly with Prof. Stefan Wermter. The project has been funded by the Experiment! programme of the Volkswagen Stiftung (funding rate < 5%).

• 2017 – € 21,600 – 6-month postdoctoral reintegration fellowship at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

• 2016 – Received a hardware grant by NVIDIA.

• 2015 – € 205,000 – 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and the University of California at Berkeley. Provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

• 2010 – € 72,000 – 3.5-year PhD scholarship within the International Research Training Group on the Semantic Integration of Geospatial Information. (IRTG-SIGI). Provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
• 2009 – € 12,000 – 1-year undergrad research fellowship at the University of Bremen. Provided by University of Bremen.
• Prices and Awards

• 2018 –  Best paper award for our contribution “Towards End-To-End raw Audio Music Synthesis”, presented at the International Conference in Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN)

Teaching

• Summer term 2022 – Lecture: Machine Learning — Development of exercises and student supervision for Prof. Nihat Ay’s Machine Learning lecture at the Hamburg University of Technology.
• Winter term 2021/2022 – Course: From Data to Knowledge: AI-based Scientific Workflows for Knowledge Generation — Self-responsible conception and teaching of a method competences course at the University of Hamburg, Germany
• Winter term 2020/2021 – Course: From Data to Knowledge: AI-based Scientific Workflows for Knowledge Generation — Self-responsible conception and teaching of a method competences course at the University of Hamburg, Germany
• Summer term 2020 – Course: From Data to Knowledge: AI-based Scientific Workflows for Knowledge Generation — Self-responsible conception and teaching of a method competences course at the University of Hamburg, Germany
• Winter term 2019/2020 – Lecture: Data Science — Self-responsible conception and teaching of a lecture (externally) at the West Coast University of Applied Sciences, Heide, Germany
• Summer term 2019, 2020 and 2021 Bachelor project: Cognitive Robotics Self-responsible conception and teaching of a student project and the University of Hamburg
• Winter term 2018/2019 – Bio-inspired Artificial Intelligence — Teaching lectures on Embodied Language Robots and Machine Learning at the University of Hamburg
• Summer term 2018 – Seminar: Cognitive Robotics for Assistive Technology — Self-responsible conception and teaching of a seminar at the University of Hamburg
• Winter term 2017/2018 – Seminar: Bio-inspired Artificial Intelligence — Self-responsible supervision and teaching of students within a seminar at the University of Hamburg
• Summer term 2017 – Neural Networks seminar — student supervision at the University of Hamburg, Germany
• Dec. 2016 – Embodied Language Robots — guest lecture at the Knowledge Technology Institute, University of Hamburg, Germany

Invited Talks

• 28.9. 2019 – “Artificial Intelligence: Methods, Opportunities and Challenges” A general talk on Artificial Intelligence to leading intellectual property directors of companies including Volkswagen AG (GER), Sony (JP), Philips (NL), Electrolux (SE), Bracco (IT), Safran (FR), Nantworks (US), und Thyssenkrupp (GER).
• 29.4. 2019 – Podium discussion in the “Museum der Arbeit” (Hamburg Museum of Work) on the topic “Arbeit, Autos, Androiden: Was versprechen wir uns von Künstlicher Intelligenz?” (Work, cars, androids: What do we expect from Artificial Intelligence?)
• 5.12. 2018 – Invited Talk: “Warum mein Staubsauger nicht mit mir reden kann: von Fähigkeiten und Unfähigkeiten Künstlicher Intelligenz” (Why can’t my vacuum cleaner talk to me? About capabilities and incapabilities of Artificial Intellgience) FORUM – Junge Wissenschaft im Gespräch, Gästehaus der Uni Hamburg,
• Dec. 2015 – Natural Language Understanding and Emergent Conceptualization for Robotics — Invited talk at Siemens research, Berkeley, California, USA

Commitee Membership, Reviewing and Editorials

• 2021 – Lead Editor, Künstliche Intelligenz, Special Issue on Developmental Robotics

• 2020 – PC member, German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI – Künstliche Intelligenz)

• 2019 – Reviewer, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

• Since 2018 – PC member, International Conference on Artificial Neural Netorks (ICANN)

• Since 2018 – PC member, International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-Epirob)

• 2017 – PC member, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)

• 2016 – Principal organizer of the 1st int’l Workshop on Creative Agents (CREAS), co-located with AAMAS 2016

• 2016 – PC member, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)

• 2016 – PC member, International Workshop on Computational Models of Social Creativity (CMSC)

• 2015 – Reviewer, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence (JETAI)  — Special Issue on Cognitive Robotics — Editors: Mehul Bhatt, Esra Erdem, Fredrik Heintz, Michal Spranger (Taylor & Francis)

• 2011 – Reviewer, Situational Awareness for Assistive Technologies — Volume 14 of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, Editors: Mehul Bhatt, Hans W. Guesgen (IOS Press)

• 2011 – OC Member, GIZeitgeist – Young Researchers Forum on Geographic Information Science

Membership in Scientific Societies

• Since 2016 – IEEE – IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
• Since 2015 – Association for Neural-Symbolic Integration (NeSy)
• Since 2011 – Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (German Informatics Society)

Travel Grants

• 2018 – Travel grant for the ICANN 2018 conference, Rhodes, Greece. Provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

• 2015 – Travel grant for the IJCAI 2015 conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Provided by IJCAI.

• 2013 – Travel grant for the 1st Winter School on AI and Robotics 2013, Örebro, Sweden. Provided by the University of Örebro.

• 2013 – Travel grant for the Commonsense Reasoning Symposium 2013, Cyprus. Provided by the Artificial Intelligence Journal (Elsevier).

• 2011 – Travel grant for the Interdisciplinary College 2011 (IK2011), Günne, Germany. Provided by Gesellschaft für Informatik.