Sebastian Thrun

Sebastian Thrun ( born May 14, 1967 in Solingen ) is a professor of artificial intelligence at Stanford University. He developed the Stanford Racing Team to autonomously driving VW Touareg 'Stanley', which in 2005 the prize of one million U.S. dollars DARPA Grand Challenge won. For this achievement he was awarded with prize money of 30,000 euros Braunschweig Research Prize 2007. In 2007, the Stanford Racing team took under his direction with the also autonomously driving VW Passat " Junior " at the DARPA Urban Challenge in part that successfully ended the vehicle in second place.

Life

Thrun studied computer science, medicine and economics at the University of Hildesheim until his bachelor's degree in 1988. His diploma he obtained in 1993, the doctorate rer. nat. 1995 with the distinction summa cum laude from the University of Bonn in computer science and statistics.

In 1998, he took on an assistant professor (since 2001 Associate Professor ) of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, in 2003 he moved to Stanford University, where he became a regular professorship in 2007.

For summer semester 2011 he was relieved from his teaching duties in order to have more time for his research as a Google Fellow. He built there in the research department Google X. On April 25, 2012 Thrun presented a prototype of Google's Project Glass glasses with Charlie Rose.

Thrun is one of the co-founders of the online academy Udacity.

Awards and Affiliations

• Since 2007 he is member of the Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina.
• In 2007 he received the Braunschweig Research Prize.
• In 2011 he was awarded the Max Planck Research Award.
• Member of the National Academy of Engineering