Tristan Schnell studied computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) from 2010 to 2017, specializing in cognitive systems, robotics and anthropomatics. He wrote his master's thesis "A Spiking Neural Network for arm motion adaptation using motor primitives" at the FZI Research Center for Information Technology.

Since December 2017, he has been working as a research associate in the robotics department in the Intelligent Systems and Product Engineering (ISPE) division and works as a software developer and project manager. He is heading the department since 2024.

In his PhD, he is working on various AI methodologies, in particular on the development of self-awareness and risk understanding for robots.