Emre Ugur
Ph.D.
He is an Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
He received his PhD degree in Computer Engineering frm METU. He was a research assistant at KOVAN Lab, METU (2003-2009); worked as a research scientist at ATR, Japan (2009-2013); visited Osaka University as a specially appointed Assist. & Assoc. Prof. (2015, 2016); worked as a senior researcher at the University of Innsbruck (2013-2016); and was an Assist. & Assoc. Prof. at Bogazici University (2016-2026).
He participated in several projects funded by EU, TUBITAK, and JST. He has been the Principle Investigator of IMAGINE and INVERSE projects supported by European Commission, Horizon 2020 Programme; EXO-AI-FLEX project supported by TUBITAK, 1003 program; and DeepSym and DeepPlan projects supported by TUBITAK, 1001 program.
He was awarded The Young Scientist Award by the Science Academy (BAGEP) and
The Excellence in Teaching Award by the Faculty of Engineering (link) in 2023.
He serves as an Editor for Robot Learning in International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (TCDS) and International Journal on Robotics Research (IJRR).
He is IEEE Senior Member, and interested in robotics, robot learning, cognitive robotics, and neuro-symbolic robotics.
Google scholar page.
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News
- We are organizing ICDL 2026 Workshop on "Neuro-Symbolic Robotics in the age of Foundational Models" link
- I will give invited talks at IROS 2026 workshop titled "RoBoWoMo: Bridging the Gap between Neural and Symbolic World Models for Robot Planning, Reasoning, and Action" RoBoWoMo and "Neuro-Symbolic AI for Intelligent Robots: Integrating LLMs, Knowledge Graphs, & Automated Reasoning" iros-ar2026.
- Our paper is accepted to NeurIPS 2026 as Spotlight! link
- I will be serving as Editor in Robot Learning at IEEE ICRA Conference Editorial Board for 3 years.
- I will give invited talk at CoRL 2025 Workshop Learning Effective Abstractions for Planning (LEAP)
- We have a new pre-print on Neuro-Symbolic Robotics: link
- Interviewed by Mirgün Cabas ve Can Kozanoğlu for Nereden Başlasam Podcast on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (Turkish).
- Served as Program Chair in ICDL-EpiRob 2018 and ICDL-EPIROB 2017. Topic editor in Frontiers in Neuroscience for research topic Machine Learning Methods for High-Level Cognitive Capabilities in Robotics.
- Organized/co-organized IROS 2023 Workshop on World Models and Predictive Coding in Cognitive Robotics (link), IROS 2022 Workshop on Life-long Learning of High-level Cognitive and Reasoning Skills (link), RSS 2021 Workshop on Declarative and Neurosymbolic Representations in Robot Learning and Control (link), Türkiye Robotbilim Konferansı - ToRK2018, RSS 2018 Workshop on Computational Models of Affordance for Robotics, IROS 2018 Workshop on Language and Robotics, IROS 2017 WS on Machine Learning Methods for High-Level Cognitive Capabilities in Robotics, IROS 2016 WS on Machine Learning Methods for High-Level Cognitive Capabilities in Robotics, Shonan Meeting 2016 on Cognitive Development and Symbol Emergence in Humans and Robots, IROS 2015 Workshop on Learning object affordances, ICAR 2015 Workshop on Robot Learning, IROS 2013 Workshop on Neuroscience and Robotics, Humanoids 2012 Workshop on Developmental Robotics.
- Guest edited/editing Special I on World Models and Predictive Coding in Robotics in Advanced Robotics (link), Special Issue on Symbol Emergence in Robotics and Cognitive Systems" in Advanced Robotics (link), IEEE TCDS Special Issue on Affordances, Frontiers Research Topic Machine Learning Methods for High-Level Cognitive Capabilities in Robotics
- Our research has appeared in national news TV channel Haberturk, in hurriyet.com.tr and in DW Turkce.
Activities
