Research group leader
Prof.‘in Georgia Chalvatzaki, Ph.D
Georgia is a Full Professor for Interactive Robot Perception & Learning at the Computer Science Department of the Technical University of Darmstadt and Hessian.AI. She is the recipient of the renowned Emmy Noether (EN) grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for her project iROSA (2021-2027), and has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2024 for her research project SIREN (to start in 2025).
Contact: georgia.chalvatzaki<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Administrative Staff
Yanina Georg
Yanina Georg joined the PEARL Lab on 1st October 2023 as an Assistant.
Yanina studied translation and interpreting in the Group of Pavel Palaschenko at the Moscow State Linguistic University and holds a diploma as an interpreter/translator of the English and Finnish languages, simultaneous/UN interpreter and as a marketing specialist (Diploma of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration).
Contact: sekretariat<at>pearl.tu-darmstadt.de
Tel: +49 6151 16 21813
Postdoctoral Researchers
Vignesh Prasad, Ph.D
Vignesh Prasad joined the PEARL group as a Postdoctoral Researcher in February 2024. He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Robot Learning, 3D Computer Vision, Human-Robot Interaction
Contact: vignesh.prasad<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Gabriele Tiboni
Gabriele Tiboni joined the PEARL group as a part-time Postdoctoral Researcher in December 2024. He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki and Prof. Carlo D’Eramo.
Research Areas: Reinforcement Learning, Robot Learning, 3D Computer Vision
Contact: gabriele.tiboni<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Kumar Manas
Kumar Manas joined the PEARL group as a Postdoctoral Researcher in October 2025. He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Robot Learning, Foundation Models, Representation Learning, Automated Driving
Contact: kumar.manas<at>tu-darmstadt.de
PhD. Students
Snehal Jauhri
Snehal joined the PEARL/iROSA group at TU Darmstadt as a PhD researcher in June 2021.
He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas : Robot Learning, 3D Computer Vision, Neural Fields, Reinforcement Learning
Contact: snehal<at>robot-learning.de, snehal.jauhri<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Ali Younes
Ali joined the PEARL/iROSA group at TU Darmstadt as a PhD researcher in September 2021.
He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas : Robot learning, Information theory, Representation learning
Contact: ali<at>robot-learning.de, ali.younes<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Rickmer Krohn
Rickmer Krohn joined the PEARL/iROSA group as a PhD researcher in August 2023.
He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki and Prof. Carlo D’Eramo.
Research Areas : Robot Learning, (Multisensorial) Reinforcement Learning , Explainable AI/RL
Contact: rickmer.krohn<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Sohan Rudra
Sohan Rudra joined the PEARL/iROSA group as a PhD researcher in September 2023.
He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas : Robot Task Planning, Large Foundational Model Grounding
Contact: sohan.rudra<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Jiayun Li
Jiayun Li joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a PhD student in October 2023. Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki supervises his research.
Research Areas : Optimal Control, Model Learning, Approximate Bayesian Inference
Contact: jiayun.li<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Yufeng Jin
Yufeng Jin joined the PEARL group as a PhD student at TU Darmstadt in December 2023. His research is jointly supervised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki and Dr. Mathias Franzius at the Honda Research Institute Europe. The focus of his research primarily revolves around object 6D pose estimation and uncertainty analysis.
Research Areas: Computer Vision, Robotics
Contact: yufeng.jin<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Yuezhe Zhang
Yuezhe joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a PhD researcher in March 2024. He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Reactive Task and Motion Planning, Learning for Planning, Multi-Robot Systems
Contact: yuezhe.zhang<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Steven Li
Steven joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a PhD student in October 2024. He is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Reinforcement Learning, Robot Learning
Contact: zechu.li<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Franziska Herbert
Franziska joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a PhD student in December 2024. She is advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Imitation Learning, Representation Learning, Robot Learning, Human-Robot Interaction
Contact: franziska.herbert<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Sophie Lueth
Sophie Lueth started her PhD at the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt in January 2025, after having joined the group as a Research Assistant in September 2024. She is supervised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Mobile Manipulation, Multimodal Robot Learning, Whole-Body Manipulation, Safety
Contact: sophie.lueth<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Max Siebenborn
Max started his PhD at the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt in April 2025. He is supervised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Structured Robot Learning, Multimodal Learning, Representation Learning, Geometric Learning
Contact: max.siebenborn<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Technical Staff
Mel Germroth
Mel Germroth joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt in October 2024 as a lab technician.
Contact: mel.germroth<at>tu-darmstadt.de
Co-Supervised PhD. Students
Niklas Funk, co-supervised by Jan Peters
Kay Hansel, co-supervised by Jan Peters
An Thai Le, co-supervised by Jan Peters
Sven Schultze, co-supervised by Ruth Stock-Homburg
Visiting PhD. Students & Interns
Alessio Palma
Alessio Palma is a visiting PhD student from Sapienza University of Rome. He is visiting the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt from May 2025, advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki and Prof. Fabio Galasso.
Research Areas: Embodied AI, Human Motion Synthesis, Dataset Distillation.
Contact: a.palma<at>diag.uniroma1.it
Alumni
Julen Urain
Julen Urain joined the PEARL group as a Postdoctoral Researcher in December 2024. He was advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Generative Models, 3D Computer Vision, Imitation Learning, Optimization
Contact: julen<at>robot-learning.de
Elisa Alboni
Elisa Alboni is a PhD student at the University of Trento. She joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a visiting PhD student from January 2024. Her work here is supervised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki and Prof. Andrea Del Prete.
Research Areas: Reinforcement Learning, Trajectory Optimization.
Contact: elisa.alboni<at>unitn.it
Luca Scofano
Luca Scofano was a visiting PhD student from the Sapienza University of Rome. He visied the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt student from May 2024 – September 2024, co-supervised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki and Prof. Fabio Galasso.
Research Areas: Human Motion Analysis, Embodied AI, Procedural Learning.
Contact: scofano<at>diag.uniroma1.it
Han Liu
Han Liu joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a project intern from September 2024 to July 2025 advised by Prof. Georgia Chalvatzaki.
Research Areas: Natural Language Processing, Human Robot Interaction, Multi-modal Learning.
Contact: hanliu879010<at>gmail.com
Davide Tateo, Ph.D
Davide Tateo joined the PEARL group at TU Darmstadt as a Substitute Professor from April 2025 to September 2025.
He has recently joined as a Senior Lecturer at Lund University. Please refer to his new website here
Research Areas:
Reinforcement Learning: Safe RL, Deep RL
Robotics: Fast and reactive motion planning, Locomotion
Contact: davide.tateo<at>cs.lth.se
Undergraduate Students and Research Assistants
- Kai Liu, M.Sc Student
- Noah Farr, B.Sc Student
- Ansh Prakash, M.Sc Student
- Raveen Liyanage, M.Sc Student
- Dustin Gorecki, M.Sc Student
- Pedro Moreto, M.Sc Student
- Martina Gassen, M.Sc Student
- Christian Maurer, M.Sc Student
- David Lang, M.Sc Student
- Fabian Hahne, M.Sc Student
- Dejian Gong, M.Sc Student