Werner-von-Siemens-Ring foundation honours doctoral student Andreas Dörr

Munich – The Werner-von-Siemens-Ring foundation has accepted Andreas Dörr to its network of outstanding young scientists. Dörr is honored for his research activities in the field of self-learning systems (otherwise known as reinforcement learning). His research focuses on new methods that enable fast learning on real systems, even if the amount of available data is limited. Andreas Dörr's research results expand our knowledge of how to learn to control complex systems that are difficult to model – such as autonomous driving in highly dynamic situations – automatically and robustly.

Image credit: Stefanie Winkler

The ideas, algorithms, and systems that emerged from his work have led to various patents. In cooperation with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) and the Machine Learning and Robotics Lab at the University of Stuttgart, his research results have been published at the leading international conferences for robotics and machine learning.

From 2016 to 2019, Dörr completed his doctorate in a joint project between the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) in Renningen, the MPI-IS, and the University of Stuttgart. At the MPI-IS, he is a member of the Cyber Valley "Intelligent Control Systems" research group, which is led by Dr. Sebastian Trimpe. "I have known Andreas since 2015, when he wrote his master’s thesis in my group at the MPI-IS," says Trimpe. "Afterwards, Andreas started his Ph.D. research on reinforcement learning at the Bosch Center for AI in collaboration with my group at the MPI-IS and with Marc Toussaint from the University of Stuttgart. In his Ph.D., he developed new methods in reinforcement learning, which he published at the top-tier conferences in the field. He also applied his algorithms on real-world systems, such as the Apollo robot at our institute and autonomous race cars developed by Bosch. The combination of fundamental methodological research and its application on real-world engineering problems is truly remarkable."

Every two years since 1977, the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring foundation has awarded prizes to young researchers in the technical and natural sciences. In its growing network, it creates spaces for interdisciplinary networking and debate about the structure and conditions of the German research landscape. All the young scientists in the network have achieved outstanding accomplishments in technical research and development and are generally younger than 35. 132 talented researchers have received awards for their promising research so far.

The nine prize winners together with Prof. Dr. Joachim Ullrich, Chairman of the Foundation Board. Image credit: Stefanie Winkler

Image credit: C. Gerlach