Jochen Renz

Jochen Renz is a Professor at the School of Computing within the ANU College of Systems & Society at the Australian National University. His research focuses on Artificial Intelligence, particularly in knowledge representation, spatial and physical reasoning, qualitative reasoning, and AI for games. He leads the Angry Birds AI Competition and related initiatives, exploring AI's adaptability in open-world environments. His work includes the SAIL-ON project funded by DARPA, which uses Angry Birds as a testbed for novel AI challenges.

Education: Renz holds a Master’s (1996) and PhD (2000) in Computer Science from the University of Ulm and Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Germany. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at institutions in Sweden, Austria, and Australia before joining ANU in 2003. From 2011–2020, he headed the ANU Artificial Intelligence Group.

Research Interests: His work spans AI, spatial reasoning, computational complexity, and game-based AI challenges. He emphasizes physical reasoning systems, qualitative spatial representations, and benchmarking for open-world AI. Key projects include the Angry Birds AI Competition and the DARPA-funded SAIL-ON initiative.

Awards: He was an ARC Future Fellow (2010–2014). Recent work explores explainable AI, reinforcement learning safety, and novel task generation in physics-based environments.

Advising & Grants: Supervises student projects across all levels (undergrad to PhD) in AI, games, and reasoning. The SAIL-ON project (AUD 2.3M, 2019–2023) exemplifies his large-scale collaborative research efforts.

Labs & Teams: Former head of the ANU AI Group (2011–2020). Current work integrates AI with physics simulations, emphasizing real-world applicability through game-based testing and open-world novelty research.