I am interested in developing autonomous robot systems. I am the founding director of METU-ROMER (Center for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence) since 2021. I have also founded the KOVAN Research Lab. in 2002 which is now embodied in the METU-ROMER. My research focused on the development and control of swarm robotic systems and on the learning of affordances and concepts in language in robots. In 2009 I was awarded a free 53-DOF iCub humanoid robot platform by the RobotCub project to support my research in cognitive robotics.
I received my PhD in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University in 2000, after getting my BSc and MSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, and Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University in 1991 and 1995 respectively. Before assuming my current position, I worked as a Chief Scientist at the  Starlab Research Laboratories, Belgium, and as a post-doc at IRIDIA of Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, for the Swarm-bots project coordinated by Prof. Marco Dorigo. I visited the Personal Robotics Lab., and Manipulation Lab. of Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University between 2013-2015 as a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellow through the project ITHRUI (Towards Better Robotic Manipulation: Improvement through Interaction).

• NEW!! I'm offering Int.to Computer Organization (Section 2) in Fall 2022. lectures will be held at BMB3 on Tuesday 13:40-15:30 and Thursday: 8:40-10:30!. Check here for updates! .
• NEW!! ROB501: Fundamentals & Emerging Topics in Robotics within the new Robotics Graduate Program in Spring 2022. The page is under construction will be updated frequently. .
• RoboRoyale (ROBOtic Replicants for Optimizing the Yield by Augmenting Living Ecosystems), funded by EU-H2020-FET-Open (RIA), has started.
• KALFA: New Methods for Assembly Scenarios with Collaborative Robots, funded by TUBITAK, has started. Students wanted!
• METU-ROMER (Center for Robotics and AI Technologies) is officially founded with me as its founding director. Follow us on Twitter@meturomer to get the recent updates
• Follow me on twitter on Twitter@lorenihas
• Turkiye Robotbilim Arastirmacilari Mektuplasma Listesi