Nikolaus Correll (born 1977 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

, Germany) is a

roboticist Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and an associate professor at the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sys ...

in the Department of Computer Science with courtesy appointments in the departments of Aerospace, Electrical and Materials Engineering. Nikolaus is the faculty director of th
Interdisciplinary Research Theme on Multi-functional Materials
at th
College of Engineering and Applied Science
and the founder and CTO of Robotic Materials Inc.

Biography

Correll obtained a Diploma (Masters) in Electrical Engineering from the

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

. He spent the first two years of his studies at the Technische Hochschule München, participated in the Erasmus Programme to spend a semester at Lunds Tekniska Hogsköla working wit
Rolf Johansson
and wrote his Diploma thesis at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

working with Alcherio Martinoli and Joel Burdick. Correll received his Dr. és science (Phd) degree in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

in 2007 at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) working under Alcherio Martinoli. Correll did a post-doc with Prof. Daniela Rus at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He became an assistant professor at the

in 2009, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2017. Correll is the recipient of a 2012

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party *National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...

''CAREER award'', the 2012

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

''Early Career Faculty Fellowship'', and a 2016 ''Provost Faculty Achievement Award''. He is a senior member of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Work

Correll's research is on

Swarm Robotics Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. ″In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between ...

Swarm Intelligence Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in ...

, and

Self-organization Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffi ...

. He is using these concepts to equip

composite materials A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...

with intelligence and enabling

robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

with autonomy, for which he coined the term Robotic Materials and founded a company of the same name, which markets robotic manipulation systems based on smart tactile sensors, skins and hands. Correll is also an active researcher in robotics education and is the author of an open-source, collaborative textbook "Introduction to Autonomous Robots". Correll's work on robotic materials has received worldwide media attention including the Associated Press, Neue Zuercher Zeitung, the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, and

Popular Science ''Popular Science'' (also known as ''PopSci'') is an American digital magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. ''Popular Science'' has won over 58 awards, incl ...

, among others. In addition to serving as CEO of Robotic Materials Inc., Correll has been an advisor to TempAlert (acquired,Digi International Acquires TempAlert
/ref> NASDAQ: DGII), TABS, and Occam Robotics, and currently to Robotise SE.

Academic Heritage

Since starting at the University of Colorado in 2009, two of Correll's former PhD students have taken up faculty jobs at PhD-granting institutions:
Erik Komendera
PhD 2014, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech
Michael Otte
PhD 2011, Assistant Professor in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park

Honors

* Keynote Speaker at the Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020 * Provost Faculty Achievement Award, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2016 * Plenary speaker at the Int. Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), 2016 * Best Paper Award at the 3rd Conference on System-integrated Intelligence (SysInt), 2016 * Best Paper Award at the Int. Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) 2006 and 2014 * NSF CAREER award 2012 * NASA Early Career Faculty Fellowship 2012 * Best Paper Award at the Int. Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB), 2008

References

External links

Correll lab at the University of Colorado
{{DEFAULTSORT:Correll, Nikolaus 1977 births German roboticists German computer scientists Technical University of Munich alumni University of Colorado Boulder faculty ETH Zurich alumni École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne alumni Living people Scientists from Munich