Stefan Schaal

Stefan Schaal
Stefan Schaal
Born	1961 (age 62–63); Georgia Institute of Technology; Pennsylvania State University; Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems; University of Southern California
Doctoral advisor	Klaus Ehrlenspiel
Other academic advisors	Christopher G. Atkeson
Doctoral students	Jan Peters
Website	stefan-schaal.net

Stefan Schaal (born 1961) is a German-American computer scientist specializing in robotics, machine learning, autonomous systems, and computational neuroscience.^[2]

Education and career

Schaal was born in

Ph.D. in computer aided design and artificial intelligence at the Technical University of Munich and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

, receiving his Ph.D. in 1991 (Summa Cum Laude) under Klaus Ehrlenspiel.

In 1991, Schaal was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department and Brain and Cognitive Science and the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, funded by the

Georgia Institute of Technology as an adjunct assistant professor, and also held the same rank at the Pennsylvania State University. In 1996, Schaal assumed a group leader position in the ERATO Kawato Dynamic Brain Project in Japan. Schaal joined the University of Southern California

in 1997, where he advanced from the ranks of assistant professor, to associate professor, to full professor.

In 2009, Schaal became a founder in defining and creating the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen and Stuttgart, Germany, an institute focusing on principles of perception-action-learning systems in synthetic intelligence. In 2012, Schaal founded the Autonomous Motion Department (AMD) at this institute, while maintaining a partial appointment at USC. In 2018, Der Spiegel published an article alleging that this double affiliation was improper,^[3] and although Schaal rejected the allegations,^[4] he left his position at the Max Planck Institute.

Stefan Schaal joined

Google X as lead of a robotics research team in late 2018.^[5]

Research

Stefan Schaal's interests focus on autonomous perception-action-learning systems, in particular anthropomorphic robotic systems. He works on topics of

nonlinear dynamical systems. Stefan has co-authored more than 400 publications^[6] in top conferences and journals, and served as organizer on various top conferences in machine learning and robotics. He has received numerous best paper awards and honors in his scientific community. Stefan Schaal has been noted as one of the five leaders in robotics in 2011,^[7]

and among the top robotics experts in the world.