Professor Dr Sebastian Thrun
- Section Informatics
- Location Stanford, CA, USA, United States
- Election year 2007
Research
Sebastian Thrun has made substantial contributions to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. He pioneered the emerging field of "Probabilistic Robotics," which leverages statistical methods into Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Thrun leads a group of scientists renown for their contributions to autonomous cars. In 2005, his team won the "DARPA Grand Challenge," a desert race of driverless vehicles organized by the US Department of Defense, and endowed with a $2M prize. Research on car safety and autonomous driving carried out in the "Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab," which has been directed by Thrun since 2004, are largely viewed as the defining works in the field.
Career
- since 2011 Research professor of computer science, Stanford University
- 2007–2011 Professor of computer science and electrical engineering, Stanford University
- since 2004 director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL)
- 2003–2007 Associate professor of computer science and (since 2006) electrical engineering, Stanford University
- 1998–2003 Assistant professor and (since 2001) associate professor of computer science, robotics, and automated learning and discovery, Carnegie Mellon University
- 1995–1998 Research Computer Scientist, Carnegie Mellon University
- 1995 Dr. rer. nat. (Ph.D.) in computer science and statistics, University of Bonn, Germany