Speakers

Bio: A visionary leader and consummate professional, Sami Haddadin brings a wealth of expertise to the MBZUAI leadership team. Alongside his exemplary academic background, he has demonstrated remarkable aptitude as an instrumental force behind multi-billion-euro AI strategies. Haddadin was the founding and executive director of Europe’s largest centre of robotics and machine intelligence, TUM’s Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI). MIRMI became one of the world’s leading centers, ranked number one in robotics according to csrankings.org and number two by airankings.org. Haddadin established himself as a foremost expert in robotics worldwide as professor and chair of robotics and systems intelligence at TUM. He is widely recognized for his pioneering work in tactile mechatronics, contactaware robots, safety methodologies in human-robot interaction, and autonomous manipulation learning. His innovations range from manipulators and unmanned aerial vehicles to mobile systems, humanoids, intelligent prosthetics, and exoskeletons. He holds degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, and technology management (TUM/LMU), earned his doctorate with high distinction from RWTH Aachen and became an IEEE fellow in 2024.

Website: https://mbzuai.ac.ae/study/faculty/sami-haddadin/    

Talk Title: 

Energy Optimal AI Control for Dynamic Robots 

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Bio: Jan Peters is a full professor (W3) for Intelligent Autonomous Systems at the Computer Science Department of the Technische Universitaet Darmstadt since 2011, and, at the same time, he is the dept head of the research department on Systems AI for Robot Learning (SAIROL) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz, DFKI) since 2022. He is also is a founding research faculty member of the Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence. Jan Peters has received the Dick Volz Best 2007 US PhD Thesis Runner-Up Award, the Robotics: Science & Systems - Early Career Spotlight, the INNS Young Investigator Award, and the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society's Early Career Award as well as numerous best paper awards. In 2015, he received an ERC Starting Grant and in 2019, he was appointed IEEE Fellow, in 2020 ELLIS fellow and in 2021 AAIA fellow. Despite being a faculty member at TU Darmstadt only since 2011, Jan Peters has already nurtured a series of outstanding young researchers into successful careers. These include new faculty members at leading universities in the USA, Japan, Germany, Finland and Holland, postdoctoral scholars at top computer science departments (including MIT, CMU, and Berkeley) and young leaders at top AI companies (including Amazon, Boston Dynamics, Google and Facebook/Meta). Jan Peters has studied Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical and Control Engineering at TU Munich and FernUni Hagen in Germany, at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Southern California (USC). He has received four Master's degrees in these disciplines as well as a Computer Science PhD from USC. Jan Peters has performed research in Germany at DLR, TU Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (in addition to the institutions above), in Japan at the Advanced Telecommunication Research Center (ATR), at USC and at both NUS and Siemens Advanced Engineering in Singapore. He has led research groups on Machine Learning for Robotics at the Max Planck Institutes for Biological Cybernetics (2007-2010) and Intelligent Systems (2010-2021).

Website: https://www.ias.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/Member/JanPeters 

Talk Title: 

Inductive Biases - such as Energy! - in Robot Learning and Control

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Bio: Dongheui Lee is full Professor of Autonomous Systems at TU Wien, Austria since 2022. She is also leading the Human-Centered Assistive Robotics group at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) since 2017. Her research interests include robot learning, human-robot interaction, and human-centric assistive robotics. She obtained a PhD degree from the Department of Mechano-Informatics, University of Tokyo in Japan. She was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a group leader at a Project Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, and a research scientist at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). She was awarded a Carl von Linde Fellowhip and a Helmholtz professorship prize. She has served as IEEE RAS AdCom member, Senior Editor and a founding member of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Website: www.tuwien.at/en/etit/ict/asl 

Talk Title: 

Safety-aware robot learning using energy tank

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Bio: Matteo Saveriano is an Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering (DII), University of Trento. Before, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Innsbruck and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). He received a Ph.D. degree cum laude in 2017 from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. His research is at the intersection of control theory and machine learning, with a focus on safe and efficient robot learning. He is the coordinator of the EU HE project INVERSE.  He also serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), and The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR). 

Website: https://matteosaveriano.weebly.com

Talk Title: 

Energy-Aware Learning-Control for Human-Robot Collaboration 

Abstract: 

Robotic manipulation demands for sophisticated control policies and accurate management of the forces exchanged with the environment. While learning-based controllers have shown a great potential in learning complex policies, safety guarantees during the learning and execution phases are still missing. In this talk, I will present recent results on stability- and passivity-based learning-control and its application in robotic manipulation.

Bio: Born in 1991, F. Califano received the Ph.D. degree in Automatic Control and Operational Research from the University of Bologna in 2019. He is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science (EEMCS), in the Robotics and Mechatronics (RaM) group, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. His research activity covers many topics, including port-Hamiltonian theory, geometric and nonlinear control, robotics, AI methods for control, multi-physics modeling, modeling and control of distributed parameter systems, and fluid dynamics. He is the author or coauthor of over 40 publications, including international conference proceedings, journal articles and book chapters.

Website: https://people.utwente.nl/f.califano  

Talk Title: 

From Passivity to Energy-Aware Control in Robotics

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Bio: Cosimo Della Santina received the Ph.D. degree (cum laude) in robotics from the University of Pisa in 2019. He is currently an Associate Professor with TU Delft in the Netherlands, and a Guest Research Scientist with the German Aerospace Institute (DLR) in Munich. He was a visiting Ph.D. student and a Postdoc with Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 2017 to 2019. He was then a Senior Postdoc and a Guest Lecturer with the Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, in 2020 and 2021, respectively. His research interest is in providing motor intelligence to unconventional robotic systems, especially those involving elastic and soft components. Dr. Della Santina is the Delft AI lab SELF co-director and a VENI laureate. He has been awarded the 2020 Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award, the 2023 IEEE RAS Early Career Award, and an ERC Starting Grant in 2024. In 2025, he co-founded the Swiss-based start-up Embodied AI, working to bring safe and capable robots in human spaces.

Website: https://cosimodellasantina.eu/  

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Bio: Sandra Hirche holds the TUM Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professorship and heads the Chair of Information-oriented Control in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany (since 2013). She received the diploma engineer degree in Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering in 2002 from the Technical University Berlin, Germany, and the Doctor of Engineering degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2005 from the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. From 2005 - 2007 she has been a PostDoc Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science at the Fujita Laboratory at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Prior to her present appointment she has been an Associate Professor at TUM. Her main research interests include learning, cooperative, and networked control with applications in human-robot interaction, multi-robot systems, and general robotics. She has published more than 200 papers in international journals, books and refereed conferences. She has received multiple awards such as the Rohde & Schwarz Award for her PhD thesis, the IFAC World Congress Best Poster Award in 2005 and – together with students – Best Paper Awards of IEEE Worldhaptics and IFAC Conference of Manoeuvring and Control of Marine Craft in 2009 and the Outstanding Student Paper Award of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2018. In 2013 she has been awarded with an ERC Starting Grant on the “Control based on Human Models” and in 2019 with the ERC Consolidator Grant on “Safe data-driven control for human-centric systems”.

Website: https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/hirche-sandra  

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Bio: Ramy Rashad is an Assistant Professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia, affiliated with the Control and Instrumentation Engineering Department and the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics (IRC-IMR). He received the B.Sc. degree in Mechatronics Engineering with highest honors from the German University in Cairo (GUC) in 2013, ranking among the top five of his class. During his studies, he spent a research stay at Julius Maximilians University Würzburg, Germany, where he worked on mobile robot control. From 2013 to 2015, he pursued the M.Sc. degree in Mechatronics Engineering at GUC with highest honors, conducting research in aerial robotics while teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, and spending a research term at GUC’s Berlin branch. In 2016, he began his Ph.D. research in the Robotics and Mechatronics (RAM) Department at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. He received the Ph.D. degree with honors (cum laude) in January 2021 and continued as a postdoctoral researcher at RAM until 2024. His research interests include robotics, mechatronics, and advanced control, with a focus on intelligent and autonomous systems.

Website: https://ramyrashad.com/   

Talk Title: 

Geometric Port-Hamiltonian Approach for Interactive Aerial Robots 

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