Oliver Brock
▶ Moderator
Photo: SCIoI
Prof. Dr. Oliver Brock is a roboticist and spokesperson of the Cluster Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), where he plays a central role in shaping interdisciplinary efforts to understand intelligence. In addition, he serves as Co-Spokesperson of the Robotics Institute Germany (RIG), a major national initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space to connect leading robotics centers, strengthen international visibility, and accelerate progress in AI-driven robotics.
Oliver Brock’s research explores the foundations of embodied intelligence: how intelligent behavior emerges through the interaction of body, environment, and control. Representing the synthetic discipline of robotics within SCIoI, he brings together engineering, computer science, and insights from psychology and behavioral biology to investigate intelligence across natural and artificial systems.
His work focuses on the algorithmic principles that enable robots to autonomously perform complex tasks in dynamic, real-world environments. Challenging purely data-driven views of intelligence, he emphasizes the role of physical embodiment and interaction. This perspective has driven pioneering contributions to soft robotics, where flexible and adaptive materials allow robots to “compute” through their physical properties. At his Robotics and Biology Lab at Technische Universität Berlin, he and his team have developed influential systems such as the RBO Hand, demonstrating how intelligent behavior can arise from the interplay between form, material, and control.
Beyond robotics, Brock applied his computational approaches to problems in structural molecular biology, including protein folding and docking, underscoring the broad applicability of his research.
He studied computer science at TU Berlin and at Stanford University, where he also completed his Ph.D. After academic positions in the United States, including at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he returned to Germany in 2009 as an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at TU Berlin.
