Speakers

Federico Renda (KU)

Dr. Federico Renda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Before joining Khalifa University, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 2014. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2007 and 2009, respectively.

Dr. Renda's research interests encompass the study of multibody dynamical systems, including modeling and control of complex soft and underwater robots, focusing on the application of the principles of geometric mechanics. His research is applied to the agile motion of highly deformable manipulators as well as underwater swarm robotics for persistent surveillance of large submerged structures.

Stephane Cotin (INRIA)

Dr. Stephane Cotin is a Research Director at Inria and the leader of the MIMESIS team. Previously, he was the research lead of the Simulation group at CIMIT in Cambridge (USA) and an instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He also worked as a research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab (MERL) in Cambridge after getting his Ph.D. from the University of Nice, in France.

His main research interests are in real-time physics-based simulation (of soft tissues, fluids, medical devices, and imaging processes) to improve surgical training, planning, and image-guided therapy. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific articles and involved with several key conferences in his research domain. To disseminate his work and to accelerate research in his fields, he initiated and developed the SOFA project, which is now a reference open-source solution for developing advanced simulations. He is also a co-founder and scientific advisor of 3 companies: InSimo, Twinical, and EVE.

Robert Katzschmann (ETH)

Robert Katzschmann is an Assistant Professor of Robotics at ETH Zurich and the founder of the Soft Robotics Lab, where he develops new robotic morphologies for a future of life-like robots that seamlessly integrate with us. Robert is also the cofounder and scientific advisor of mimic robotics, which develops autonomous dexterous manipulation solutions. He holds a Diplom-Ingenieur from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), wrote his master thesis at Stanford University (2013), and earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) in 2018.

His research spans soft robotics, biohybrid systems, musculoskeletal robotics, and dynamic control, with work published in top journals such as Science Robotics and Nature. Robert’s contributions have been recognized internationally, including as a IEEE RAS Senior Member, Ellis Member, and a TED Fellow. His TED Talk from 2022 on robots inspired by animal movement has been viewed by millions. He serves as an Editor for the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) and IEEE BioRob and holds leadership roles in major conferences such as Robotics Science and Systems (RSS), ICRA, IROS and RoboSoft. Additionally, he is an Editorial Board Member of Advanced Robotics Research and npj Robotics. His work has been featured in prominent media outlets, including The New York Times, National Geographic, and BBC News.

Liang He (Oxford University)

Liang He is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford and an Official Fellow at Kellogg College. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London with a focus on medical robotics. From 2017 to 2020, He has been a key researcher in the EPSRC Motion and RoboPatient projects, where he develops virtual simulators and wearables for medical training. In early 2021, he joined the Oxford Robotics Institute with the Embodied Intelligence Program to develop soft-sensing skin for robots working with humans.

In 2022, he was elected co-chair of the Research Staff Forum at the MPLS Division and appointed as a member of the Research Staff Consultation Group at Oxford. He was also awarded an MPLS Enterprise and Innovation Fellowship and an Ideas2Impact Fellowship from the Saïd Business School. In 2023, he joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering as an Associate Professor. His research focuses on soft robotics, biosensors, haptic and VR, and wearable robotics. In particular, he is interested in exploring embodied-AI solutions for healthcare and biomedical applications.

Cosimo Della Santina (TU Delft)

Cosimo Della Santina was born in Pontedera, Italy, on the 6th of October 1989. He holds a BSc in Computer Engineering and a MSc in Robotics and Control Theory from the University of Pisa. He was a Ph.D. student at the University of Pisa and IIT, a visiting researcher and postdoc at MIT-CSAIL, and a senior postdoc and later a lecturer at TUM. He is now Associate Professor at TU Delft (CoR, Mechanical Engineering), and a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

The ultimate goal of his group’s research is to investigate the boundary of physics and intelligence in artificial systems. They strive to understand how physical and mechanical systems (e.g., robots) can be equipped with motor intelligence and - vice versa - how intelligence can arise from the physics. They speak all kinds of languages, both in the literal (Chinese, Italian, Farsi, German, Spanish, English, ...) and the technical (Machine Learning, Mechanical Hardware Design, Differential Geometry, Computational Methods, Material Science, ...) sense. Still, their Lingua Franca remains Nonlinear Dynamics and Control theory! Their interests in the intelligence of mechanical systems include exoskeletons, flexible link robots, human body dynamics, and more standard rigid systems. Beyond that, they look at motor intelligence in physical systems ranging from fluids to epidemic spreading on social networks.

Egidio Falotico (SSSA)

Egidio Falotico is currently an Assistant Professor at The BioRobotics Institute, SSSA. He graduated in computer sciences from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2008 and completed his Ph.D. in Biorobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy, in 2013, and a Ph.D. in cognitive sciences from the University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, in March 2013. He served as PI for SSSA in EU-funded projects (Human Brain Project, Proboscis, Growbot), focusing on the development of brain-inspired algorithms for robot control and on machine learning models for soft robot control.

His research interests focus on neurorobotics, i.e., the implementation of brain models from neuroscience in robots. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 international peer-reviewed papers and he regularly serves as a reviewer for more than 10 international ISI journals.

Moderators

Josie Hughes (EPFL)

Josie Hughes is an Assistant Professor at EPFL where she set up the CREATE Lab. She previously completed her undergraduate and PhD studies at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD focused on developing robots which utilize embodied mechanics and sensory coordination for advanced capabilities. Following on from this, she worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Distributed Robotics Lab, MIT. At MIT she worked on computational design methods, wearable technologies and new novel robot fabrication methods.

CREATE Lab focuses on developing computational design and fabrication methods for robotics. The lab has a specific focus on manipulation, and robotics for food and agricultural applications. Her work has been published in Science Robotics, Nature Machine Intelligence and Soft Robotics amongst others. Additionally, she has lead teams which have won over 5 International Robotics Competitions.

David Howard (CSIRO)

David Howard leads the Robotic Design and Interaction Group and is a Principal Research Scientist in the Cyber Physical Systems program at CSIRO, Australia's national science body. He leads multiple projects at the intersection of soft robotics, evolutionary machine learning, and the computational design of novel physical objects. He currently leads the AI4Design portfolio. His interests include nature-inspired algorithms, learning, autonomy, soft robotics, the reality gap, and evolution of form. His work has been featured in local and national media.

He received his BSc in Computing from the University of Leeds in 2005, and the MSc in Cognitive Systems at the same institution in 2006. In 2011 he received his PhD from the University of the West of England. He is a member of the IEEE and ACM, and an avid proponent of education, STEM, and outreach activities. His work has been published in IEEE and Nature journals.

Yinoussa Adagolodio (INRIA)

TBD

Yasmin Tauqeer Ansari (IIT)

TBD

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