Dr. Sahin received his PhD in
Cognitive and Neural
Systems from Boston University in 2000, after getting
his BSc and MSc in
Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent
University, and Computer
Engineering from Middle East Technical University in
1991 and 1995
respectively. He joined Starlab Research Laboratories,
Belgium, as a Chief
Scientist in 2000 before moving to IRIDIA of
Universite Libre de Bruxelles,
Belgium, after its bankruptcy in 2001. At IRIDIA, Dr.
Sahin worked as a
post-doctoral researcher for the Swarm-bots project
(funded within FP5 under
Future and Emerging Technologies) coordinated by Prof.
Marco Dorigo. During his
stay, he contributed significantly to all aspects of
the project from laying
out the specifications and the scenarios for the robot
platforms, to the
coordination among partners and advising of graduate
students.
Dr. Sahin assumed his faculty
position at the
Department of Computer Engineering of METU in 2002. He
founded the KOVAN Research
Lab. which hosts 3 faculty members and 9 graduate
students at the moment. Dr.
Sahin has received more than 1,200,000€ of funding
through projects supported
by the European Union and TUBITAK. Specifically, he
has successfully completed
two StREP projects within FP6 and FP7, and one TUBITAK
project. In particular,
he received a free iCub humanoid platform from the
RobotCub consortium, after
his proposal was ranked 6th among 31
proposals received worldwide.
Dr.
Sahin’s has been working in autonomous robotics
since his PhD and has focused on swarm and cognitive
robotics during the last
decade. Besides publishing in major conferences and
journals, Dr. Sahin has
edited three journal special issues, two conference
proceedings, two books as
the proceedings of workshops (one published as the
State-of-the-Art series as
the “first book on swarm robotics”). He served as the
Technical Program Chair on Swarm Robotics
for ANTS’2010 and
as the Area Chair on Multi-Robots track for AAMAS’09.
He
is serving as an Associate Editor for the Adaptive
Behavior journal since 2008 and as Editorial Board
member of the Swarm
Intelligence journal since 2007. He served as Senior
PC and PC member for the
major conferences including ICRA, IROS, AAMAS, ANTS,
HUMANOIDS, SIS, EpiRob,
ICDL and AAAI. He reviews for major journals and has
also served as reviewer
for many national and international projects as well
as project proposals.
Curriculum
Vitae
Erol
Sahin
Associate Professor, KOVAN Research Lab.,
Department of
Computer Engineering Middle East Technical University
06531, Ankara, Turkey
Phone: +90-312-210 5539 Fax: +90-312-210
5545
E-mail: erol@ceng.metu.edu.tr Web:
http://kovan.ceng.metu.edu.tr/~erol
Education
Ph.D.,
Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University, USA.
2000. Dissertation title:
“Visual Object Localization for Mobile Robots”
M.Sc.,
Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University
(METU), Turkey, 1994.
B.Sc.
with honours, Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Bilkent University,
Turkey, 1991.
Professional
Experience
Associate
Professor – Inter-University Council, Turkey, April
2012 - now
Assistant
Professor - Dept. of Computer Engineering, METU,
Ankara, Turkey ,Sep 2004 –
April 2012
Lecturer
- Dept. of Computer Engineering, METU, Ankara, Turkey
,Sep 2002-Sep 2004
Visiting
Researcher - Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon
University, USA. Jul - Sep
2003
Post-doctoral
researcher - IRIDIA, Universite Libre de Bruxelles,
Belgium. 2001 – 2002.
Chief
Scientist - Starlab Research Laboratories, Belgium,
2000 – 2001.
Research
Assistant , Boston University Neurobotics Lab., USA,
1996 – 2000.
Teaching
Assistant, Computer Engineering, METU, Turkey. 1991 -
1995
Selected
Projects
TOOL
(Affordance-based concept formation and
tool use in humanoid robots): Funded by TUBITAK. Funding: 122,000€ Duration:
Sep 2009 - Feb 2013.
iCubROSSI
(Emergence of Communication in iCub
through Sensorimotor and Social Interaction). This project proposal
submitted to the Open Call announced
by the Robotcub (Web: http://www.robotcub.org) project
was ranked 6th among 31 proposals
and Dr. Sahin was awarded a 53 DOF iCub humanoid robot
platform (costing
255,000€).
ROSSI
(Emergence of communication in RObots
through Sensorimotor and Social Interaction): A StREP project funded in
FP7 within the “Cognitive
Systems, Interaction, Robotics” call of ICT. Funding
(METU share): 433,000€.
Duration: Mar 2008 - Nov 2011, Web:
http://rossiproject.eu .
MACS
(Multi-sensory Autonomous Cognitive Systems
Interacting with Dynamic Environments for Perceiving
and Learning Affordances)
Project: A StREP
project
funded by the EC in FP6 within the “Cognitive Systems”
strategic objective call
of IST. Funding (METU share): 307,000€ Duration: Sep
2004 - Jan 2008, Web:
http://macs-eu.org.
MQC
(Multi-Quadcopter coordination).
Funded by Turkish Air Industries. Project
duration: Jul 2011- Feb 2012. Funding: 20,000€
CRS
(Controllable Robotic Swarms):
A Career project awarded by TUBITAK. Funding:
82,000€ Duration: Apr 2005 - Apr 2010.
Invited
Talks
“Towards
robots
that can shake and talk” at Symposium on Reading
Intentions: From
children to robots. Pufendorf Institute for advanced
studies, Lund, Sweden. March
5-6, 2012.
“Affordances
in
the land of autonomous robotics” at International
Workshop on Vision, Action
and Language, Embodiment, Cefalu, Italy, April 19,
2011,
“Affordances:
The
adventures of an elephant in the land of autonomous
robots” at HUMANOIDS Workshop
on Object-Action Complexes: Representations for
Grounding Perception by Action
and Grounding of Language by Interaction, Paris,
France, December 7, 2009.
“Swarm
robotics
and Cognitive robotics research at KOVAN Research
Lab,” at Sabanci
University, Turkey, December 16, 2009,
“Self-organized
flocking
of mobile robots” at Lisbon Workshop on New Challenges
for Cooperative Robotics,
Lisbon, Portugal, Oct 24-26, 2008
Honors
and Awards
mediaCenter
GmbH,
Germany, fellowship (Aug 1996-Dec 1997)
TUBITAK
NATO
A-1 Ph.D. fellowship (Jan 1995 - Jan 1996)
Bilkent
University
fellowship (covering full tuition and a monthly
stipend) (Sep 1987 -
Jun 1991)
Hacı
Omer
Sabancı Foundation scholarship (Jan 1988 - Jun 1991)
Is
Bank
Award (1987)
Ranked
56th
among 600,000 participants in the National University
Entrance Exam (1987)
Ranked
in top
0.1% among 40,000 participants in the Science High
School Entrance Examination
(1983)
