Curriculum Vitae

Academic Experience
Since 2018Assistant Professor
Amlab, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
2016-2018 Postdoctoral Fellow, Reasoning and Learning Lab and Mobile Robotics Lab
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2015Visiting Graduate Student
Biomimetic Robotics and Machine Learning lab, Technische Universität München, Germany
2010Research intern
Robot Cognition Laboratory, INSERM U846, Lyon, France
Education
2011-2016Ph.D. in Computer Science (with distinction)
Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Thesis: Machine Learning through Exploration for Perception-Drive Robotics (2016)
Committee: Prof. Dr. J. Peters (Supervisor), Prof. Dr. M. Toussaint (U. Stuttgart), Prof.
Dr. S. Roth, Prof. Dr. von Stryk, Prof. Dr. J. Fürnkranz and Prof. Dr. C. Rothkopf.
2008-2011Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (with honors)
"Autonomous Perceptive Systems" track, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Thesis: Interaction between Face Detection and Learning Tracking Systems for
Autonomous Robots (2011).
Supervisors:
Dr. T. van der Zant, Dr. M. Wiering, Dr. P.F. Dominey and Prof. Dr. L. Schomaker.
2005-2008Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence (with honors)
University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Thesis: Using Different Methods to Direct a Robot's Attention (2008).
Supervisors: G. Kootstra and S. de Jong.
Invited Talks
International Workshop on Intelligent Autonomous Systems, 2023.
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2023. Host: Vincent François.
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 2023. Hosts: Nils Jansen and Sebastian Junges.
LabAutomation, FHI Laboratoriumtechniek, 2023.
Algorithmics group, TU Delft, 2022. Host: Mathijs de Weerdt
ELLIIT focus period seminar series, 2022.
Sycamore lab, EPFL, 2022. Host: M. Kamgarpour.
Adaptive and learning agents workshop at AAMAS, 2022.
Analytics & Optimization Group, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2022.
Machine learning meets optimization workshop, Delft, 2021.
Optimization for and with machine learning workshop, Amsterdam, 2021.
Intelligent Autonomous Systems Group, TU Darmstadt, 2020 (virtual talk). Host: Jan Peters.
Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence, 2019.
Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, 2019. Host: G. Martius
Deloite AI Center of Excellence, 2019.
Belgium Netherlands Workshop on Reinforcement Learning, 2018.
Complexity Lab, University of Utrecht, 2018.
Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence, 2018.
Departments DKE & IDS, Maastricht University, 2017.
Artificial Intelligence Department, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 2017.
Cognitive Robotics Department, TU Delft, 2017. Host: R. Babuska.
Re-Work Montreal Deep Learning Summit, 2017.
Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning Workshop, ECML 2017.
Informatics Institute, Universiteit of Amsterdam, 2017. Host: M. Welling.
Delft Center for Systems and Control, TU Delft, 2016. Host: J. Kober.
RLL & MRL labs, McGill University, 2016. Host: J. Pineau, G. Dudek, D. Meger.
CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016. Host: L. Kaelbling.
Alice Institute, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 2016. Host: M. Wiering.
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, 2015. Host: B. Schölkopf, S. Schaal.
Robot Learning Lab, UC Berkeley, 2015. Host: P. Abbeel.
RESL & CLMS labs, University of Southern California, 2015. Host: K. Hausman, G. Sukhatme, S. Schaal.
Machine Learning and Robotics Lab, Universität Stuttgart, 2014. Host: S. Otte, M. Toussaint.
Department of Computing, Imperial College London, 2014. Host: M. Deisenroth.
Robotics and Biology Group, TU Berlin, 2013. Host: S. Höfer, O. Brock.
Teaching
Lecturer, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
2019-2023Co-lecturer "Autonomous Mobile Robots" course.
2018-2023"Reinforcement Learning" master course.
2018"Project AI", supervision of two groups.
Guest Lecturer
2023"TD Learning with Function Approximation", Reinforcement learning summer school.
2022"TD Learning with Function Approximation" and "Hierarchical RL", Reinforcement learning summer school.
2020"AI in Practice" MOOC, mini-lecture "Exploiting structure in deep learning"
2020"Information Revolutions", guest lecture "Deep Learning"
2019"Policy Search Methods", Summer academy of the Deutsche Studientstiftung.
Lecturer, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2017-2018Co-lecturer "Applied Machine Learning" graduate course.
Guest lecturer, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2017Machine Learning - 'Kalman filtering and friends'.
2017Reinforcement Learning - 'Advanced policy search methods'.
Guest lecturer, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
2014-2015“Technical Foundations of Computer Science” course.
Teaching Assistant, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
2014-2015“Technical Foundations of Computer Science” course.
2013-2014“Computational Engineering” course.
2013“Machine Learning I” master course.
2012-2013“Robot learning” master course.
2011-2016“Robot learning” practical course: Supervision of 1-2 project groups per year.
Teaching assistant, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands
2011“Multi-agent systems” master course.
2010-2011“Robotics” master course.
2008-2009“Introduction to Logic” course.
2008-2009“Language and Speech technology” course.
Event Organization
2023Co-coordinator, SIKS graduate course on Reinforcement learning for adaptive hybrid intelligence
2017Workflow co-chair, International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
2016Co-organization of R:SS Workshop on Robot-Environment Interaction for
Perception and Manipulation
2014Co-organization of Humanoids Workshop on Active Learning in Robotics.
Program Committee and Reviewing
Grant reviewingCHIST-ERA (2018)
Area chairConference on Robot Learning (CoRL) (2018)
European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) (2019, 2022, 2023)
International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) (2019)
Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) (2020, 2021, 2023)
Associate EditorIEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2017)
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2019, Workshops)
JournalsAutonomous Robots (AURO), Special Issue 'Beyond Grasping' (2013)
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letter (RA-L) (2017,2019,2020)
International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (JMLC) (2019)
International Journal on Robotics Research (IJRR) (2018)
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), 2017
Journal on Machine Learning Research (JMLR) (2014, 2020, 2021)
Nature Machine Intelligence (2023)
Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (2016)
Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (2021)
Robotics and Autonomous Systems (2017)
Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems (2017)
ConferencesAAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022)
Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) (PC 2021)
Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) (2018)
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) (2017, 2019)
Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV) (2018)
IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics (2018)
IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020)
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2012, 2014, 2015,2018)
IEEE International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) (2016, 2017)
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) (2018,2019)
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) (PC 2013, PC 2016, PC 2017)
International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) (2016)
Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019)
Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS) (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020)
WorkshopsEuropean Workshop on Reinforcement Learning (EWRL) (2018)
Publications
A full list of publications is given on the publications page