Prof. Dr. Patrick van der Smagt

Patrick van der Smagt is director of the open-source Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab in Munich, focussing on probabilistic deep learning for time series modelling, optimal control, robotics, and quantum machine learning. He is the founding head of a European industry initiative on certification of ethics in AI applications (etami). Having previously directed a lab as professor for machine learning and biomimetic robotics at the Technical University of Munich, and leading the machine learning group at the research institute fortiss, he is also a faculty member of the LMU Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences. Before that, he founded and headed the Assistive Robotics and Bionics Lab at the DLR Oberpfaffenhofen. Ages ago he did his PhD and MSc at Amsterdam’s universities on neural networks in robotics and vision. Besides publishing numerous papers and patents on machine learning, robotics, and motor control, he has won a number of awards, including the 2013 Helmholtz-Association Erwin Schrödinger Award, the 2014 King-Sun Fu Memorial Award, the 2013 Harvard Medical School/MGH Martin Research Prize, and best-paper awards at machine learning and robotics conferences and journals. He is founding chairman of a non-for-profit organisation for Assistive Robotics for tetraplegics and co-founder of various tech companies.