Philipp Michel

Carnegie Mellon University | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Ph.D. Robotics, July 2008
M.S. Robotics, May 2006

Research: Humanoid Robotics / Computer Vision. Lab director, CMU Honda ASIMO lab.

Thesis: Seeing the Future: Integrating Perception & Planning for Humanoid Autonomy

GPA: 4.00/4.00

Awards: NVIDIA Fellowship, 2006 - 2007

Coursework: Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Mechanics of Manipulation, Advanced Perception, Machine Perception & Modelling of Human Behavior, Applied Research Methods, Principles of Human-Robot Interaction.

Teaching: TA, 16-264: Humanoid Robotics, Fall 2005.

Activities: RoboOrg Graduate Student Committee

Yale University | New Haven, CT, USA
Postgraduate Fellow (full-time research), Computer Science Department

Research: Social Robotics

Details: Computer vision research on a humanoid robot created to study models of human social development. Applications of research to clinical studies of autism at the Yale Child Study Center. Funded by Yale University and the German National Merit Foundation.

Cambridge University | Cambridge, UK
M.A. (Cantab)
B.A. (Hons) in Computer Science
First Class Honours (summa cum laude)

Awards:
-Triple Scholar of Churchill College for outstanding academic performance
-Scholar of the German National Merit Foundation (top 1% of students)
-Fellow of Cambridge University European Trust
-Cambridge University prize for outstanding undergraduate dissertation

Activities:
-Competitive rowing & water polo for Churchill College
-Junior Common Room (student government) international officer.

Colegio Humboldt Schule | San José, Costa Rica
German Abitur, top graduate in school history, cumulative grade: 1.0

Activities: Competitive swimming at national level, 4 years of acting.

Goldman Sachs | Tokyo, Japan
Associate, Equity Derivatives Trading

UBS | Stamford, CT / New York, NY
Summer Associate, Equities Trading

-Rotations in Quant, Electronic Volatility Trading and Derivatives Trading
-Summer project: Modeling & visualizing option greeks and premium decay
-Participated in extensive training program
-Offer for permanent employment

Wolfram Research International | Concord, MA, USA
Developer

Authored and optimized image processing / computer vision algorithms for the Mathematica digital image processing package.

Goldman Sachs International | London, UK
Summer Analyst, Enterprise Technology

-Re-designed the equity trading UNIX frontend for all european offices
-Improved trading workstation deployment process
-Ensured compliance of third party software with security & auditing guidelines
-Spent extensive time on trading floor, working alongside Equities traders
-Subsequent offer for permanent employment

Bosch AG | Bamberg, Germany
Intern, IT Department

Automated company-wide migration to Windows 2000 / Active Directory. Worked in server & network administration for an 8000 user production plant.

AIST Digital Human Research Center | Tokyo, Japan
Visiting Researcher
Postdoctoral Fellow / Summer Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2008 / 2005)

Research: GPU-accelerated real-time 3D tracking for autonomous navigation / stair climbing on an HRP-2 Promet humanoid robot. Image- and range-based perception & mapping, motion capture, footstep planning.

A New Kind of Science Summer School & Conference | Providence / Boston, USA
Student, Presenter

Worked under Stephen Wolfram on ‘Visualizing Learning Systems’, applying NKS research methdology to investigate basins of attraction in neural networks and symbolic systems.

Michel, P. (2008) Integrating Perception & Planning for Humanoid Autonomy. Ph.D. Thesis, CMU-RI-TR-08-35, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.

Michel, P., Chestnutt, J., Kagami, S., Nishiwaki, K., Kuffner, J. and Kanade, T. (2007) GPU-accelerated Real-Time 3D Tracking for Humanoid Autonomy. Proceedings of the JSME Robotics and Mechatronics Conference (ROBOMEC), June 2008.

Michel, P., Scheurer, C., Kuffner, J., Vahrenkamp, N. and Dillmann, R. (2007) Planning for Robust Execution of Humanoid Motions using Future Perceptive Capability. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2007.

Michel, P., Chestnutt, J., Kagami, S., Nishiwaki, K., Kuffner, J. and Kanade, T. (2007) GPU-accelerated Real-Time 3D Tracking for Humanoid Locomotion and Stair Climbing. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), October 2007.

Michalowski, M., Sabanovic, S. and Michel, P. (2006) Roillo: Creating a Social Robot for Playrooms. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), September 2006.

Michel, P., Chestnutt, J., Kagami, S., Nishiwaki, K., Kuffner, J. and Kanade, T. (2006) Online Environment Reconstruction for Biped Navigation. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2006.

Chestnutt, J., Michel, P., Nishiwaki, K., Kuffner, J. and Kagami, S. (2006) An Intelligent Joystick for Biped Control. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2006.

Stilman, M., Michel, P., Chestnutt, J., Nishiwaki, K., Kagami, S. and Kuffner, J. (2005) Augmented Reality for Robot Development and Experimentation. CMU Robotics Institute Technical Report CMU-RI-TR-05-55, November 2005.

Michel, P., Chestnutt, J., Kuffner, J. and Kanade, T. (2005) Vision-Guided Humanoid Footstep Planning for Dynamic Environments. Proceedings of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), December 2005.

Michel, P., Gold, K. and Scassellati, B. (2004) Motion-Based Robotic Self-Recognition. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), September 2004.

Michel, P. and El Kaliouby, R. (2003) Facial Expression Recognition using Support Vector Machines. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII), June 2003.

Michel, P. and El Kaliouby, R. (2003) Real Time Facial Expression Recognition in Video using Support Vector Machines. Proceedings of the Fifth Internation Conference on Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI), November 2003.

Reviewer, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2004
Reviewer, IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), 2007
Reviewer, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2008

German (native). Fluent in English, Spanish. Conversational Greek. Intermediate Japanese.