Short Bio

Angela Schoellig is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies and a Faculty Member of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. She holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Machine Learning for Robotics and Control and a Canada CIFAR Chair in Artificial Intelligence. She is a principal investigator of the NSERC Canadian Robotics Network and the University’s Robotics Institute. She conducts research at the intersection of robotics, controls, and machine learning. Her goal is to enhance the performance, safety, and autonomy of robots by enabling them to learn from past experiments and from each other. She is a recipient of a Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2021), the Robotics: Science and Systems Early Career Spotlight Award (2019), a Sloan Research Fellowship (2017), and an Ontario Early Researcher Award (2017). She is one of MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 (2017), a Canada Science Leadership Program Fellow (2014), and one of Robohub’s “25 women in robotics you need to know about (2013)”. Her team won the North-American SAE AutoDrive Challenge four times (2018-21) sponsored by General Motors.

Her PhD at ETH Zurich (2013) was awarded the ETH Medal and the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award. She holds both an M.Sc. in Engineering Cybernetics from the University of Stuttgart (2008) and an M.Sc. in Engineering Science and Mechanics from the Georgia Institute of Technology (2007).

Robotics Control Theory Machine Learning Dynamic Systems Quadrotors Self-Driving Vehicles

 
Download my  full CV and  head-shot image.

 

Publications

My list of publications is available here and on  Google Scholar.

 

Selected Awards and Honors

• MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 (Technology Review article, University of Toronto news, CBC interview), 2017.
• Sloan Research Fellowship, 2017
• Ministry of Research, Innovation & Science Early Researcher Award, 2017.
• Nominated for a Canada Research Chair Tier 2, 2017.
• Connaught New Researcher Award, 2015.
• MIT Enabling Society Tech Competition First Prize, 2015.
• $1M Drones For Good Competition Finalist, 2015.
  
• IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) Video Clip Contest Finalist (with this video), 2014.
• Best Robotics Paper Award at the Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV) (with this paper), 2014.
• Science Leadership Program Fellow, 2014.
• Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Prize (as one of 35 worldwide, for my PhD thesis), 2013.
• ETH Medal (awarded to the top 8% of Ph.D. dissertations at ETH Zurich, for my PhD thesis), 2013.
• Named one of “25 women in robotics you need to know about” by Robohub.org, 2013.
• Professor-Peter-Sagirow Award (for outstanding performance in the undergraduate program Engineering Cybernetics, awarded to the top two students out of 70), 2005.

Ongoing Activities

• Affiliations:
  • Associate Director of the Centre for Aerial Robotics Research and Education (CARRE), since 2015.
  • Principal Faculty Advisor for the University of Toronto’s SAE/GM AutoDrive Challenge team competing in a 3-year self-driving competition, 2017-2020.
  • Faculty Advisor of the University of Toronto Aerospace Team (UTAT), since 2015.
  • Affiliated with the University of Toronto’s Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics and the Lassonde Institute for Mining, since 2014.
• Organizer of the following events:
  • Invited Session on Learning-based Control at the 2017 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
  • Aerial Robotics Seminar Series at the University of Toronto (see Events here), since 2016.
  • Aerial Robotics International Research Symposium, Jun 21-22, 2017.
• Editor positions:
  • Associate Editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), since 2017.
  • Chair of Jury of the IEEE Control Systems Society Video Clip Contest, 2017.
  • Area Chair for the Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), 2017.