VHR Team

Principal Investigator 

Dr Letizia Gionfrida is a Lecturer at King’s College London. She received her PhD in Bioengineering from Imperial College London. After completing her PhD, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University.

Her research outputs have been published in leading robotics journals and international conferences, including Science Robotics, Nature Communications, ICORR, and BioRob, and have attracted media coverage such as The Engineer. Her work has been supported by major funding bodies including the Royal Academy of Engineering, EPSRC, the Leverhulme Trust, and different charities with approximately £1mil secured as PI within the first years of her appointment.

Dr Gionfrida is the recipient of the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship and the Philip Leverhulme Prize, alongside other recognitions including the Italy Made Me Award from the Italian Embassy. Since 2023, she serves as Associate Co-Chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Computer and Robot Vision. She is also actively involved in initiatives supporting diversity in robotics, including Black in Robotics.

Postdoctoral Research Assistant

Kamyar is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant collaborating on the design and development of soft, wearable assistive robotic gloves for post-stroke rehabilitation. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University College London, UK, where his research focused on soft actuating prosthetic devices and haptic systems. He also holds a BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Guilan and Sharif University of Technology, Iran. He has over 10 years of R&D experience in academic research centres, with interests in soft robotics, bioengineering systems, medical devices, and computational fluid dynamics.

PhD Student

Chen Tyrone Hu is a PhD candidate at King’s College London, supervised by Dr Letizia Gionfrida and Dr Shan Luo. He received his Master’s degree in Computer Technology from Sun Yat-sen University. Prior to his PhD, he accumulated over 2.5 years of industry experience as a project lead and senior algorithm engineer. His research has been published in leading robotics journals and conferences, including Nature Communications, RA-L, ICRA, and CVIU. His work on exoskeleton gloves received the Best Paper Award at the 26th TAROS and Third Prize at the Engineers in Business Competition 2025. He has also won First Place in the ECCV 2022 UrbanPipe Challenge and the 5th Lanqiao Cup C/C++ Programming Contest. He is currently serving as the technical lead of the NeuroHand project (EPSRC, UKRI2916), where he develops soft wearable exoskeleton gloves to support hand function recovery and assistive manipulation. This work is conducted in collaboration with the Vision in Human Robotics Lab and Dr Ulrike Hammerbeck’s clinical team at the Centre for Human and Applied Physiological Sciences. His long-term vision is to develop inclusive, human-centred robotic systems that bridge the gap between advanced AI technologies and real-world assistive needs, enabling equitable access to intelligent support.

PhD Student

Shirui is a Ph.D. student in Informatics under the supervision of Dr Letizia Gionfrida and Dr Matthew Howard. Prior to joining King’s, he received his MEng degree in Computer Science at University College London. His research interest lies in Computer Vision for control strategies in Wearable Robotic Devices. He is also interested in learning-based control for robots and context-awareness in robot visions.

PhD Student

Eugenia is a Ph.D. student in Informatics under the supervision of Dr Letizia Gionfrida and Professor Christos Bergeles. Prior to joining King’s, she received his MEng degree in Engineering and AI at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interest lies in computer vision for shared control strategies in surgical robotics. 

PhD Student

Defne is a PhD student researching Vision-Based Monitoring of Rheumatoid Arthritis. She holds a B.Sc. in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from UCL and an MSci in Bioengineering from Imperial College London. She has worked as a Research Assistant in the VHR Lab, where her work focused on vision-based upper limb prosthetic control. Her research interests lie on markerless motion capture, 3D modelling, and vision-based robotic control.

Research Assistant

Lara is a Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr Letizia Gionfrida. She holds a B.Sc. in Medical Biosciences and an M.Sc. in Engineering for Biomedicine from Imperial College London. Her research interests include multimodality sensing of muscles and markerless motion capture for wearable devices. Her research goal is to improve functional outcomes for patients with mobility disorders. 

PhD Student

Jianan is a PhD student in Informatics under the supervision of Dr Gerard Canal and Dr Letizia Gionfrida. He received his master’s degree in Mobile and Personal Communications from King’s College London.

His research focuses on assistive robotics, particularly robotic feeding systems. He works on developing multimodal perception methods using visual and other non-verbal signals to enable adaptive and personalised human-robot interaction, including predicting feeding timing and adapting to user feedback.

His research interests include Computer Vision, Multimodal Perception, and Reinforcement Learning.

Visiting PhD Student

Immacolata is a third‑year PhD student at the University of Naples Federico II, pursuing a doctorate in ICT for Health. Her research explores the emerging landscape of Health 5.0, with a particular focus on the environmental sustainability of new technologies and the development of human‑centred solutions. She is currently spending a six‑month research period at King’s College London, where she is deepening the human‑centred design aspect of her work. Her project investigates sustainable EMG-based approaches for the remote monitoring of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, utilizing eco-friendly devices to enhance the user experience and clinical monitoring of the condition.

Graduate PhD student

Jinlai is a  PhD student in Informatics under the supervision of Dr. Letizia Gionfrida and Dr. Michael Spratling. He completed his master's degree in artificial intelligence at King's College London. His current research interests include deep learning and computer vision, with particular focuses on small and tiny object detection.

Research Assistant

Research Assistant

Ryan is a  RA in Engineering under the supervision of Dr Nicola Bailey and Dr. Letizia Gionfrida working on an EPSRC IAA project. He completed his bachelor's degree in engineering at King's College London. His current research interests include low-cost hand prostheses for patients in need.