2021
Committee member of the National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) on handling security-relevant research

2017 – 2021
Head of the working group “Hostile-to-life Environments”, Platform ‘Learning Systems’ of the BMBF (The Federal Ministry of Education and Research)

2017 – 2021
Member of NCE (Networks of Centres of Excellence) Standing Selection Committee, Canada

2017
Chair of the Program Committee ‘Robotics and Automation’ for the German National Space Agency, (DLR)

2015
Member High-tech Forum – Expert forum “Autonomous Systems”
Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Technical/Scientific Class

2013
Member of the advisory board on Space Robotics, at the German National Space Agency (DLR)

2006 – 2012
IEEE Task Force on Intelligent Space Systems and Operations
Founding Member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation’s Technical Committee on: Space Robotics

2006
Founding Director Bremen location of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)

2002
Full Professor, Chair of Robotics, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Bremen, Germany

1999 – 2002
Tenure Track Assistant Professor, Northeastern University in Boston, MA, USA

1999
Doctorate, Dr. rer. nat, University of Bonn, Germany

1998 – 1999
Senior Scientist and Principal Investigator, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

1997 – 1998
Head of Department “Biomimetische Autonome Roboter (BAR)”
Institut für Autonome Intelligente Systeme (AIS), FHG, Sankt Augustin, Germany

1996 – 1997
Project leader Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), Sankt Augustin, Germany

1994 – 1996
Researcher Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), Sankt Augustin, Germany

1994
Diploma of Informatics, Neurobiology at the University of Bonn, Germany