Jan Oberländer studied Computer Science at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) and the University of Delaware, focusing on robotics and automation, communications engineering, and compiler construction. He wrote his diploma thesis with the Interactive Diagnosis and Service Systems (IDS) group at the Forschungszentrum Informatik (FZI), on the topic "Semantic SLAM with Complex Metric-Topological Region Features". At the University of Delaware, he obtained a Masters Degree in Computer and Information Sciences, supported by a Fulbright grant.

From November 2007 to April 2008, he held a scholarship by the Forschungszentrum Informatik (FZI) working in the Interactive Diagnosis and Service Systems (IDS) group. Since May 2008 he is employed as member of the scientific staff. Currently his research deals with situation interpretation and semantic navigation for mobile autonomous systems.