Industry experience

June 2016 – now
Research scientist in Multimodal 3D Robot Perception at Bosch Corporate Research HQ in Renningen (Germany)

Topics: 3D perception of humans, human-robot interaction, 2D/3D/9DoF object detection and segmentation, broader-level 3D scene understanding, semantic SLAM, multi-view 3D computer vision, data recording and transfer learning / auto-labelling toolchains, synthetic data generation, multi-sensor calibration and time synchronization, software & hardware architecture design for autonomous mobile systems, robot simulation, real-time deployment on embedded devices, applications to intralogistics & consumer robotics and automotive use-cases

Noteworthy achievements include academic collaborations with six different institutes; transfer of research results into business unit; five presentations / demonstration show-cases to top-level internal & external management at CEO level

January 2022 – November 2025
Collaboration lead for academic lighthouse collaboration “Context Understanding for Autonomous Systems” with the Computer Vision Group, Prof. Dr. Bastian Leibe, RWTH Aachen (5 PhD topics).

Tasks: Ideation of research proposals, contracting & budget management, reporting to top-level management, organization of workshops, poster sessions & result demonstrations, alignment with stakeholders, mentoring of several PhD topics

January 2021 – June 2025
Work package lead “3D Perception & Scene Understanding”
EU H2020 project DARKO

January 2021 – December 2022
Research and development, Semantic SLAM project

January 2021 – December 2021
Project lead “Robotics Roadmap Technologies”

January 2017 – December 2020
Work package lead “Human-Aware AGV Fleets”
EU H2020 project ILIAD

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).

Academic experience

April 2013 – April 2020
PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in Robotics/Computer Science at the Technical Faculty, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany.

Thesis topic: “Multi-modal human detection, tracking and analysis for mobile robots”. Successful PhD defense in April 2020 (grade 1 = magna cum laude). Examination committee: Prof. Dr. Kai O. Arras, Prof. Dr. Wolfram Burgard, Prof. Dr. Bernhard Nebel, Prof. Dr. Joschka Bödecker.

April 2013 – April 2016
Research associate at the Social Robotics Laboratory, University of Freiburg, funded by the EU FP7 project SPENCER. Played a leading role in the software integration and final deployment of the SPENCER robot at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport, its user interface, and measures to ensure its safe operation in public space (see final chapter of my PhD thesis).

February 2012 – March 2013
Full-time researcher in the Interactive Systems Group at the University of Duisburg-Essen with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Ziegler.

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.

Education

October 2006 – January 2012
Graduated from 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++ and Python programming on Linux (e.g. Ubuntu), Windows and embedded systems, robotics, 3D computer graphics, web development, electronics and microcontrollers.

I also have profound knowledge of state-of-the-art probabilistic and deep learning methods in machine learning, 3D computer vision and tracking (e.g. convolutional neural networks, Transformers, Kalman and particle filters, multi-hypothesis tracking), as well as hands-on experiences with 3D reconstruction methods (multi-view triangulation, 3D Gaussian Splatting, NERF, photogrammetry).

 
programming skills: C/C++ (22+ years)
Python (12+ years)
Java (5 years)
C#, Oberon, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic

Computer vision & machine learning: Expert knowledge of OpenCV, Open3D
Advanced knowledge of PyTorch, Tensorflow, MxNet (GluonCV), Keras
Practical experience with CNN- and Transformed-based models, ONNX, CUDA, TensorRT
Foundation models (large language models, vision-language models)
3D reconstruction techniques (3D Gaussian Splatting, NERF, photogrammetry / COLMAP)
Bayesian filtering & tracking (Kalman/particle filter, GNN, MHT)
AutoML tools such as Hyperopt, SMAC
Multi-view geometry, 3D triangulation

robotics & autonomous systems: Expert knowledge of ROS1 (Robot Operating System), ROS2 basics
Human-robot interaction, user interface design
Electronics, mechanical assembly, maintenance of compute hardware and storage
Arduino, .NET Micro Framework, CanOPEN protocol
Eagle PCB editor

sensors: GigE/USB3 machine vision cameras
Camera projection models (Kannala-Brandt, fisheye models like Double-Sphere, Mei, EUCM)
Structured light & time-of-flight RGB-D sensors (Kinect v1, v2, Asus Xtion, Azure Kinect)
2D safety laser (SICK, Hokuyo, RPLidar)
3D LiDAR (Velodyne, Ouster, Livox)
Camera calibration, lidar-to-camera calibration, time synchronization

development tools: VSCode, Github Copilot, Sublime, Eclipse SDK, MS Visual Studio, Arduino IDE
Atlassian JIRA & Confluence, Jenkins, Redmine, Ant, Maven
CMake, Doxygen
Git, SVN

2D/3D computer graphics: Unreal Engine 4, basics of Unity3D
OpenGL, OpenSceneGraph, OGRE, Qt
rviz visualization, rqt

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

  • 2024: CoRL
  • 2023: ICCV
  • 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