Manuel Keppler leads the Elastic Robot Control group at the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in Germany. His team seeks to advance the foundations of robot control, planning, and design to empower elastic robots to achieve human-like motion performance and efficiency. He further directs the control development for DLR David, a humanoid robot equipped with variable stiffness actuators. Manuel received a B.S. in molecular biology from the University of Vienna, Austria, in 2009, a B.S. and M.S. (Summa Cum Laude) in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, in 2012 and 2014 and the PhD in computer science (Summa Cum Laude) from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. He joined the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as a research scientist in 2014 and since 2019 he is leading a control team. From 2019 to 2020 he was Visiting Researcher at Sapienza University in Rome collaborating with Prof. Alessandro De Luca. As of 2023, Manuel leads his own research group. His current research interests include the control and analysis of nonlinear and underactuated systems, including compliant and variable stiffness robots, and the design of robust and energy-efficient robots. 
Manuel’s contributions to the field have been acknowledged through his recognition as a finalist for the “Best Paper Award on Automation” at the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Stockholm, Sweden. Additionally, in 2023 he has received an “IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Best Paper Award” Honorable Mention.