Dr. Prahlad Vadakkepat

Assistant Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
National University of Singapore

Director: Robhatah Robotic Solutions
General Secretary - FIRA [www.fira.net]
Federation of International Robot-soccer Association

Dr. Vadakkepat, an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore is the founder secretary of the Federation of International Robot-soccer Association (FIRA) and currently its General Secretary. He is also the founder director and chief mentor to an entrepreneurial start-up “Robhatah Robotic Solutions” at Singapore [www.robhatah.com]. His initiative among others includes an international conference on Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CIRAS) which is being held successfully since 2001. He was the general chair to the FIRA RoboWorld Cup and Congress Singapore 2005.

Dr. Vadakkepat is an associate editor of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics. His Humanoid robot and robot soccer teams have consistently won several international prizes. The latest include a first prize and overall championship in Humanoid robot soccer at the FIRA Robot World Cup Germany 2006, Singapore 2005 and Austria 2003, First Prize in Singapore Robotic Games (2004) and Second prize in FIRA 2004 (first Prize was won by a robot sold by his start-up Robhatah).

He has been elected as the Secretary to the IEEE Singapore Section for the year 2005. He has served as Technical Activity Coordinator to the IEEE Region 10 (Asia-Pacific) in 2001-2002. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), India.

He is also actively involved in various technical forums including conferences, symposia and robotic competitions. He has been featured in several prominent newspapers and TV shows in India, Singapore, USA, Korea, Spain and France.

Dr. Vadakkepat received his M.Tech and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in 1989 and 1996 respectively. He was a Lecturer at the Regional Engineering College, Calicut, India from 1991 to 1996. While pursuing Post-Doctoral studies at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST, 1996-1998), he was awarded the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) fellowship. Since 1999, he is with the National University of Singapore.

His research interest include Distributed robotic systems, Humanoid robotics, DNA Computing, Neuro-Fuzzy Controllers and Intelligent Control techniques and, has publications in several leading international journals.