Jun Jin, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

Robotics Machine Learning Reinforcement Learning Control Systems Software Engineering and Intelligent Systems Computer Engineering Signal and Image Processing

About

Jun Jin is an assistant professor in the ECE department at the University of Alberta and a recent Fellow of Amii. He obtained his PhD in the Department of Computing Science in 2021 from the University of Alberta. His work on real-world robotic reinforcement learning was a top-3-finalist of the Outstanding Student Paper Award at ICRA 2022, which is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He was the recipient of the KUKA Innovation Award global top-5 finalist and invited to live demos at Hannover Messe 2018. Before coming to the University of Alberta, he gained eight years of professional experience in the ICT industry and the construction/mining industry, working on autonomous driving, autonomous open-pit mining and structural health monitoring systems for civil infrastructures. 

Jun loves exploring the beautiful trail system in the City of Edmonton from spring to winter. He is enthusiastic about camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains.

Personal website: https://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~jjin5/

Research

Areas

• Robotics
• Machine Learning
• Reinforcement Learning

Interests

Generally, I am interested in Robotics and Machine Learning research. Specifically, I focus on topics in robotic reinforcement learning which intersects with embodied artificial intelligence, the theory of predictive coding, continual learning and open-ended learning agents. In applied research, I am starting projects in AI for construction (optimal and multi-modal construction planning agents, robotics for infrastructure maintenance) and healthcare robotics.

Summary

Robotics is the future! But we need human-centered autonomy! My long-term goal is to develop general learning architectures and algorithms to make robots agile to move, easier to program, and human-aware to interact with, which in all compose my vision for the future of robotics and artificial intelligence: Human-Centered Autonomy. To learn more about my research please visit my personal website.

I am looking for highly motivated students to join my group, the University of Alberta Human-Centered Autonomy Lab. If you expect a strong reply from me. Students in my group will have the chance to join the Amii student intra-network that provides abundant resources regarding funding, computing, and industrial connections.

Click here for current position openings. 

I will start offering a new course in the 2024 Winter term.

• ECE 720 B01 Robot Learning: Principles and Advances 
  • https://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~jjin5/hca/courses/ece720-robot-learning.html

ECE 720 - Advanced Topics in Software Engineering and Intelligent Systems

Browse more courses taught by Jun Jin