Jakob Buhmann

Research Area: Animation

I am a Research Scientist at DisneyResearch|Studios in the animation and interaction group of Bob Sumner. Prior to coming to DRS in 2018, I received my BSc and MSc in physics from ETH Zurich. After my MSc, I completed my PhD at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (UZH and ETH) under the supervision of Matthew Cook. During my doctoral studies, I was motivated by questions of how the brain computes and learns, and I worked in a highly interdisciplinary area including fields such as machine learning, neuroscience, and control theory. My main research interest is to study efficient computational systems for controlling complex systems, such as virtual agents (e.g. animated characters) or robots. In this context, I have a strong interest in approaches that combine various aspects of machine learning algorithms (such as reinforcement learning), hierarchical planning/control, and distributed computational models (such as probabilistic graphical models).