Daniel Lee
GRASP Faculty Member until '18, Executive Vice President, Samsung Research
Dr. Daniel Lee left Penn in 2018, to see more information about his new position visit: https://www.ece.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/daniel-dongyuel-lee
Dr. Daniel Lee was the UPS Foundation Professor in Transportation of Electrical and Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Director of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab. He joined the Penn faculty in 2001, after six years in the Theoretical Physics and Biological Computation departments of Bell Labs. His research focuses on improving the speed and efficiency with which computers and other artificial systems process information, in part by using biological systems as a model for intelligent robotic systems that can learn from experience.
As Director of the GRASP Lab, he leads a $13 million research center that integrates computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering to develop technological innovations. GRASP researchers have pioneered such vital areas as building autonomous vehicles and robots, developing self-configuring humanoids, and making robot swarms a reality. Dan served from 2008-2011 as Evan C Thompson Term Professor for Distinguished Teaching and in 2006 received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, Penn’s highest cross-university teaching award.
Dan is also the co-director of the CMU-Penn University Transportation Center, his group focuses on understanding general computational principles in biological systems, and on applying that knowledge to build autonomous systems. Dan is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and in 2004 received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation. He earned a PhD in Physics (1995) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an AB summa cum laude in Physics (1990) from Harvard University.
The UPS Foundation Chair in Transportation, one of three UPS Foundation Chairs at Penn, supports studies of transportation management as enabled by technology. The UPS Foundation was established in 1951 with a mission to help build stronger and more resilient communities around the world, focusing on: Diversity, creating opportunities for underrepresented communities; Volunteerism, promoting volunteerism and building capacity within the nonprofit sector; Community Safety, enhancing community well-being through road safety and humanitarian relief; and Environment, supporting energy conservation and reforestation.
Research Groups
Publications
Assumed density filtering Q-learning
Publisher International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)
Learning Q-network for Active Information Acquisition
Publisher IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Approximating Explicit Model Predictive Control Using Constrained Neural Networks
Publisher IEEE American Control Conference (ACC)
Online self-supervised monocular visual odometry for ground vehicles
Publisher IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
Team THOR’s Entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials 2013
Publisher Journal of Field Robotics
News
GRASP News
“Penn Engineering Offers an Online MicroMasters in Robotics” in Penn Engineering
February 28, 2017
GRASP News
“Penn robots defeat Iran in world soccer championship” in the Daily Pennsylvanian
September 3, 2015
Student News
“Battle of the bots: US blocks Iran and putters ball to glory in RoboCup finals” in The Guardian
July 23, 2015
Student News
“US humanoids defeat Iran team in football RoboCup final” in Aljazeera News
July 23, 2015
GRASP News
July 14, 2015
Faculty News
“Daniel Lee Appointed UPS Foundation Professor in Transportation” in Penn Engineering News
July 1, 2015
Faculty News
February 25, 2015
Faculty News
February 11, 2015
GRASP News
July 11, 2014
Faculty News
Dan Lee of GRASP showed off Penn’s robot soccer team in D.C. and explained the value for students
June 13, 2014
Faculty News
Vijay Kumar, Dan Lee and Katherine Kuchenbecker – LIVE on the Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane
January 16, 2014
GRASP News
“Roboticists from Penn Engineering take on the world” in the Penn Current
January 9, 2014
Faculty News
“Funding Innovation for Cleaner Cities”…Dr. Daniel Lee and Dr. CJ Taylor join in on the discussion
April 17, 2013
Faculty News
Penn Drives Transportation Research Forward…Led by Engineering’s Dan Lee
January 22, 2013
Faculty News
Dan Lee, GRASP Professor, invited to appear on Colbert Report “Keep Fear Alive”
October 29, 2010
GRASP News
November 9, 2009
Ph.D. Students
Alumni
Robotics MSE '11; PhD, ESE '16; Manager, Driver Risk Assessment, Toyota Research Institute
Robotics MSE '16; Assistant Professor Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Director of Perception and Autonomous Robotics Group(PeAR)