Jongseok Lee

Jongseok Lee

Robotics Researcher

Welcome!

I am a Nanyang Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, where I head the RUNES lab ("Laboratory for Robots under Uncertainties"). My group investigates the probabilistic principles of manipulation intelligence to enable safe, reliable, and high-performing AI-based robotic systems in real-world industrial applications.

Prior to joining NTU, I spent nearly a decade as a Research Scientist at the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. During this time, I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science ("summa cum laude") from KIT. I hold an M.Sc. in Robotics, Systems and Control from ETH Zurich and a B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from TU Delft. I made my media debut by fishing drones :)

My Ph.D. thesis, "Uncertainty in Deep Learning: A Probabilistic Robotics Perspective," received the 2026 Georges Giralt Ph.D. Finalist Award, recognizing the best European doctoral dissertation in robotics. As a DLR scientist, I contributed to over ten national and international projects and led the aerial manipulation team to become a finalist for the 2023 KUKA Innovation Award.

News

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  • [05/2026] I am currently looking for motivated PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers to join my lab at NTU Singapore. If you are interested, please see this link for more details.
  • [04/2026] This August, I will be joining NTU Singapore as a Nanyang Assistant Professor (tenure-track). I will be recruiting students and research staff — stay tuned!
  • [03/2026] Presented my work at European Robotics Forum 2026 in Stavanger. Many interesting discussions on trustworthy AI from both academia and industry!
  • [12/2025] Happy to present my work at the workshop on trustworthy AI of Robotics Institute Germany! Inspiring discussions on role of uncertainty in academia and industry.
  • [10/2025] I defended my PhD! I thank my advisors Rudolph Triebel & Tamim Asfour, and the committee: Marc Tousssaint, Raffaela Mirandola, Jan Niehues & Marvin Künnemann.
  • [07/2025] At the conference on advances in robotics 2025, I deliverd a tutorial on "Probabilistic Robotics 2.0: Uncertainty in Deep Neural Networks". See more details here.
  • [06/2025] At Automatica 2025, I successfully demonstrated a new vision system for the DLR humanoid TORO. I showed how active learning can be useful for semantic SLAM.
  • [05/2024] At ICRA 2024, we are hosting a workshop on "Back to the Future: Robot Learning Going Probabilistic". Big honour to be a lead organizer and also big international efforts! See more details here.
  • [04/2024] At Hannover Messe 2024, we demonstrated a collaborative robot and an AI-based solution for traditional textile manufacturing. There, I transferred by work on tuft recognition to robotic manipulation of linear deformable objects.
  • [04/2024] I finished about half-year long research visit to the KIT's High Performance Humanoid Technologies (H2T) Lab. I will miss my time at Karlsruhe :)
  • [10/2023] At IROS 2023, I co-chaired a session on "aerial systems: applications".
  • [10/2023] At IROS 2023, I delivered an invited talk at a workshop "Differentiable Probabilsitic Robotics". See more details here.
  • [08/2023] Our work on SPIRIT was featured on IEEE video friday. Check out these links: Link 1 & Link 2.
  • [06/2023] We got KUKA Innovation Award Finalist 2023. Check out these links: Link 1 & Link 2.
  • [04/2023] We were interviewed by the EU RIMA. Check out these links: Link 1 & Link 2.
  • [05/2023] Our RA-L2023 paper was on Helmholtz AI news-feed. Check out this link: Link.
  • [04/2023] We were interviewed by the EU RIMA. Check out these links: Link 1 & Link 2.
  • [11/2022] Our research on aerial manipulation was featured at the ProRobots channel. Check out this Link.
  • [10/2022] We are organizing an IROS 2022 workshop "Probabilistic Robotics in the Age of Deep Learning". Big honour to be a lead organizer!