Speakers

Prof. Thomas Schmickl

Artificial Life Lab of the Institute of Biology, Karl-Franzens University Graz, Austria

Title: 

Honeybees & Robots - An alliance for science and society

Bio: My research interest has always been on complex adaptive systems, which could be natural systems, like animal swarms, herds or flocks, or artificial swarm systems, like robot swarms or transportation networks. I am fascinated by the features of swarm intelligence, collective decision making and self-regulation in natural organisms most prominently in honeybees, but also in other social insects or organisms. Phenomena like self-organization, phase transitions, emergence, and pattern formation are the key features that interest me in these systems. My method is to decompose these focal systems into their intrinsic networks of component interactions, in order to reveal the governing feedback loops at the core of  these systems. These insights allow me to decompose these systems into "functional building blocks", a perspective that generates a fundamental understanding of these systems. These functional building blocks can be easily translated and recombined to create systems in other domains, like robot swarms, morphogenetic agents or bio-inspired algorithms.

Webpage: https://www.thomasschmickl.eu/ 

Prof. Cesare Stefanini 

Director of the BioRobotics Institute of School of Advanced Studies Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy

Title: 

Approaching complex systems via bioinspired robotics

Bio: Cesare Stefanini is the Director of the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA) in Pontedera, Italy, where he is also the Head of the Creative Engineering Design Lab.

He received the M.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering, robotics and automation track, and the Ph.D. degree in Industrial and Information Engineering, microengineering track, from SSSA, both with honors, in 1997 and 2002, respectively.

From 2018 to 2021 he has been the Director of the HEIC research Center of Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi.

His research activity is applied to different fields, including small scale robotics, bioinspired systems, mechatronics and robotics for environmental, medical and industrial applications. He received international recognitions for the development of novel actuators for microrobots and he has been visiting researcher at the University of Stanford, Center for Design Research.

Dr. Stefanini is currently the PI of four research projects, including two international projects on underwater swarm robotics. Dr. Stefanini has been the scientific advisor of a leading company in the field of robotic surgery (MMI - Medical Micro-instruments SpA) and the recipient of the "Intuitive Surgical Research Award". Dr. Stefanini is the author or co-author of more than 230 articles on refereed international journals and on international conferences proceedings. He is the inventor of 17 international patents, 10 of which industrially exploited by world-leading companies, including Amazon Inc., Magneti Marelli S.p.A., General Electric Co, and Pirelli & C. S.p.A.

He is a member of the Academy of Scientists of the UAE and of the IEEE Societies RAS (Robotics and Automation), EMBS (Engineering in Medicine and Biology) and PES (Power and Energy).

Prof. Antonio Celani 

Head, Senior Research Scientist, Quantitative Life Sciences, International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

Title: 

Multi-Agent reinforcement Learning

Bio: Antonio Celani is a statistical physicist working in Reinforcement Learning and the physics of behavior. He received his PhD at Politecnico di Torino, Italy in 1998. After post-doctoral fellowships at Max Planck Institute in Munich and at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur he became researcher for the French National Research Council (CNRS) in 2000. In 2007 he moved to the Institut Pasteur Paris as a research director where he started working at the interface between physics and biology. He joined ICTP in 2014 to contribute to the establishment of the Quantitative Life Sciences Section. He currently works on the theory of Reinforcement Learning and its applications to physics and biology.

Webpage: https://www.ictp.it/member/antonio-celani#biography        

Donato Romano [M.Sc. in Agriculture Science and Technologies (honors) 2014, PhD in BioRobotics (honors) 2018] is currently an Assistant Professor at The BioRobotics Institute, where he coordinates the Bio-Robotic Ecosystems Lab. Romano is mainly focusing his activities on bioinspired and biomimetic robotics, and in particular on animal-robot interaction, biohybrid systems, natural and biohybrid intelligence, ethorobotics, neuroethology. Major aims of his research are biodiversity preservation, sustainable environmental management, life support in extreme scenarios. He received national and international recognition for his research. He is co-founder and R&D Director of the HUBILIFE srl (spin-off of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) aimed at developing and commercializing bioinspired devices to improve human daily life. He also worked as visiting scholar at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi (UAE). He is Coordinator, PI, or partner of several national and international research projects.

Webpage: https://www.santannapisa.it/it/donato-romano   

Email: donato.romano@santannapisa.it

Giulia De Masi is currently Associate Professor at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. After her Ph.D. and PostDoc in Complex Systems, she started working in the R&D field for the Marine Industry in 2008, joining the Department of Advanced Engineering Services and Technology Innovation Projects of Snamprogetti. She worked in several academic institutions in the United Arab Emirates, including the Technology Innovation Institute, where she served as a Principal Scientist for 4 years. She has more than 100 publications, 4 patents, and 40 reports for the Industry. She has been WiDS (Women in Data Science) Ambassador for UAE in 2018 and Women Propel for IEEE-OES in 2020. 

Her research interests include Collective Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Data Science, mainly with applications to the Ocean environment and multi-robot systems.

Webpage: https://giuliademasi.weebly.com/   

Email: giulia.demasi@sorbonne.ae