Marc Toussaint
Marc Toussaint is an ELLIS Fellow and a full professor at TU Berlin, where he leads the Learning and Intelligent Systems lab. His research bridges AI reasoning, optimization, and machine learning to tackle fundamental problems in robotics. He studied physics in Cologne, then did a PhD in Bochum and a postdoc in Edinburgh. In 2015 his IJCAI paper on Logic-Geometric Programming offered an optimization-based approach to combined task and motion planning. He held a full professorship at Stuttgart from 2012 to 2020 and a Max Planck fellowship from 2018 to 2021.
Timeline
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1998–2004
From physics to neuroinformatics
He studies physics in Cologne from 1998, then starts a PhD at Bochum's Institut für Neuroinformatik in 2000.
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2004–2006
Probabilistic inference for MDPs
From 2004 to 2006 he is a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh. In December 2006 his report with Stefan Harmeling and Amos Storkey uses expectation maximization to compute optimal policies for MDPs.
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2007–2010
Emmy Noether group in Berlin
He heads a machine learning and robotics group in the Emmy Noether Programme at TU Berlin from 2007 to 2010.
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December 2012–February 2020
Full professor in Stuttgart
In December 2012 he becomes a full professor at the University of Stuttgart and heads its Machine Learning and Robotics Lab until February 2020. His IntCDC cluster projects include on-site robotics and a robotic kinematic system for parallel construction.
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2015
Logic-geometric programming
In 2015 he publishes Logic-Geometric Programming at IJCAI, an optimization-based approach to combined task and motion planning. The paper formulates the problem as a first-order logic extension of a mathematical program.
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2017–2021
Amazon, MIT and Max Planck
In 2017 he leads the ML-Robotics lab at Amazon in Berlin, and from 2017 to 2018 he is a visiting scholar at CSAIL, MIT. In November 2018 he becomes a Max Planck Fellow with the MPI for Intelligent Systems, a fellowship that runs until June 2021.
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Since 2020
Learning and Intelligent Systems lab
Since March 2020 he is a full professor at TU Berlin, where he heads the Learning and Intelligent Systems lab. Its research bridges AI reasoning, optimization, and machine learning to tackle fundamental problems in robotics. He is an ELLIS Fellow.
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2026
Planning in the Age of Learning
In 2026 he speaks at the RPL Summer School with a talk titled Planning in the Age of Learning.
Sources and credits
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- Marc Toussaint | Prof. Dr. Marc Toussaint @ TU Berlin
- Report EDI-INF-RR-0934
- Prof. Dr. Marc Toussaint | Cluster of Excellence Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Transformative Architecture (IntCDC) | University of Stuttgart
- Abstract | IJCAI
- Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence | IJCAI
- Marc Toussaint | Falling Walls
- Marc Toussaint | European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems
- Learning and Intelligent Systems @ TU Berlin
- Marc Toussaint – RPL Summer School 2026