Current occupation

Starting from June 2016
Research scientist in Robot Perception at Bosch Corporate Research HQ in Renningen (Germany). Leading a work package on 3D Perception and Scene Understanding in EU H2020 project DARKO, after being work package leader for Human-Aware AGV fleets in ILIAD. Project lead of an internal R&D project since January 2021.

Academic experience

April 2013 – April 2016
Researcher at the Social Robotics Laboratory, University of Freiburg, working in the EU FP7 project SPENCER on multi-modal person and group tracking for mobile robots, as well as human attribute recognition from RGB-D point clouds. Played a leading role in the software integration and final deployment of the SPENCER robot at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, and successfully devised and implemented a number of hardware and software measures to ensure its safe operation in public space. Successfully defended my PhD thesis in April 2020.

February 2012 – March 2013
Full-time researcher in the Interactive Systems Group at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

April 2008 – March 2010 & December 2010 – January 2012
Student research assistant in the Interactive Systems group at the University of Duisburg-Essen: R&D of hybrid & context-aware recommender systems.

Industry experience

July 2010 – September 2010
Internship at Microsoft Corporation in Bellevue/Redmond, WA, as a Software Development Engineer In Test in the Bing User Experience team.

April 2010 – June 2010
Software development internship at HSBC Global Asset Management, Düsseldorf (Germany).

Education

October 2006 – January 2012
Graduated from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, in Applied Computer Sciences (Angewandte Informatik). Diploma (M.Sc. equivalent) with highest honours (mit Auszeichnung bestanden, 1.0). Holder of a scholarship of the state of Northrhine-Westphalia.

1997 – 2006
Education for the university entrance qualification (German “Abitur”) at Franz-Haniel-Gymnasium, Duisburg, Germany. Finished with highest distinction (German grade 1.0).
 

Technical skills

Due to my numerous experiences in various disciplines, I possess extensive software and hardware expertise in different fields such as C++ programming on Linux, Windows and embedded systems, robotics, Java-based web development, electronics and microcontrollers, and game development.

I also have profound knowledge of state-of-the-art probabilistic and deep learning methods in machine learning, computer vision and tracking (e.g. convolutional neural networks, Kalman and particle filters, multi-hypothesis tracking).

 
programming skills: C/C++ (19+ years)
Python (7 years)
Java (5 years)
C#, Turbo Pascal, Oberon 2, Delphi, Visual Basic
robotics: Expert knowledge of ROS (Robot Operating System)
Electronics and mechanical assembly skills
CanOPEN protocol, .NET Micro Framework 4, Arduino
Eagle PCB editor
machine learning and
computer vision:		 MxNet (GluonCV), Keras, PyTorch, Tensorflow
Hyperopt, SMAC
OpenCV, Open3D
sensors: GigE/USB3 machine vision cameras
Structured light & time-of-flight RGB-D sensors (Kinect v1, v2, Asus Xtion, Azure Kinect)
2D safety laser (SICK LMS, Hokuyo)
3D LiDAR (Velodyne, Ouster)
development tools: VSCode, Sublime, Eclipse SDK, MS Visual Studio
Jenkins, JIRA, Redmine, Ant, Maven
CMake, Doxygen
Git, SVN
multimedia skills: Unreal Engine 4, basics of Unity3D
OpenGL, OpenSceneGraph, OGRE, Qt

operating systems: Windows & Linux (expert)
spoken languages: German (mother tongue)
English (fluently) – Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English (Grade A)
French (basics)
 

Awards and honors

  • Outstanding reviewer award at IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2019 in Montréal, Canada (link)
  • Best student paper award for a paper on Removing Motion Blur using Natural Image Statistics I co-authored together with my Diploma thesis advisor (2014)
  • Diploma (M.Sc. equivalent) in Applied Computer Sciences with highest honours, best in 2012 class
  • Sparkassenpreis 2011 der Sparkasse Duisburg for excellent performance in my studies
  • Scholarship of the state of Northrhine-Westfalia (2009-2011)
  • 1st prize at the Newcomer Award of the German Game Developer Award (2006)
  • Graduated best in class 2006 with the general qualification for university entrance (Abitur) at Franz-Haniel-Gymnasium, Duisburg
  • 1st prize at the Duisburger Mathematikwettbewerb (regional round of mathematics olympiad) in my age class (2002)
 

Conference attendances

  • 2021: CVPR, IROS, ICCV (online)
  • 2020: CVPR, ICRA, IROS (online)
  • 2019: CVPR, RSS, AICon
  • 2018: IROS, IAS
  • 2017: ICCV
  • 2016: ICRA
  • 2015: IROS, ICRA, CVPR
  • 2014: FUSION
  • 2013: ICRA