Dr.-Ing. Maria Danninger is a computer scientist from the Technical University of Munich. She conducted her doctoral dissertation in Computer Science / Human-Computer Interaction with with Prof. Alex Waibel at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. During her doctoral studies, she was also a visiting researcher of Prof. C. Nass at the CHIME Lab at the Stanford University. Prof. Nass and his CHIMe Lab are world-renowned for studying fundamental relationships between humans and interactive media. Maria has extensive international experience in business / IT management and consulting. She also brings valuable experience from her previous position as “Head of Project Management” at TÜV SÜD. Maria joined the MSRM as the Chief of Technology and Innovation at the beginning of 2020 and returned from maternity leave in March 2021. We are happy to have you back, Maria! See her CV.
Dr. Utku Culha received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bilkent University, Turkey from the Computer Engineering Department. He started his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland with Prof. Fumiya Lida and then moved to the University of Cambridge, UK to help establish the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory. After completing his Ph.D. in the design and control of physically adaptive soft robots, Utku joined the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. Combining fellowships from the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he worked with Prof. Metin Sitti at MPI on the control of small-scale soft robots, statistical machine learning on physical systems, and the control of self-assembling robotic elements. We warmly welcome Utku, who recently joined the MSRM as the Chief of Science in April 2021. He is interested in creating physically and computationally adaptive robotic systems. See his CV.
Finally yet importantly, we also warmly welcome Dipl. Kff. Magdalena Buch, the most recent senior management team member. Magdalena became Managing Director of MSRM in June 2021. Before, she held different positions at Chemie-Cluster Bayern GmbH, where she built up the business unit “internationalization” and worked as a project leader for various EU-funded cooperation projects. She studied business administration at the University of Passau in Germany and the University of Toulouse UT1 in France. As managing director, she will steer financial planning, HR planning, and administrative processes at the MSRM. See her CV.