Speakers

Biography
Matthew Spenko is a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Tech.  He earned the B.S. degree from Northwestern University and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT, all in Mechanical Engineering.  He was an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University before becoming a faculty member at the Illinois Institute of Technology.  His research is in the general area of robotics with specific attention to mobility in challenging environments and localization safety.  Prof. Spenko is a senior member of IEEE, an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics, and a finalist in the XPRIZE Rainforest Competition. 
Title
Harnessing Robotics for Ecological Data Collection: Innovations and Insights from the XPRIZE Rainforest Challenge

Biography 

Salua Hamaza is an Assistant Professor in Aerial Robotics and Director of the BioMorphic Intelligence Lab at TU Delft, Netherlands. Her research focuses on biologically inspired drones that can physically interact with objects and the environment, leveraging compliant design and control algorithms to enhance drones' autonomy and versatility. Her team includes 7 PhDs and 3 PostDocs. She earned her PhD in Robotics from the University of Bristol and completed a postdoc at Imperial College London. She holds an MSc in Robotics, awarded jointly by the University of Bologna, Italy, and TU Delft.

Title 

Drones for Nature Conservation – New Paradigms to Extend Environmental Monitoring Missions

Biography

Tenured Researcher at the National Research Council of Italy – Institute of Marine Engineering. Previously Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Soft Systems Group, University of Edinburgh, focussing on offshore robotic sensors. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture (University of Genoa, University of A Coruña, University of Trieste and Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research). She also holds a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the National Oceanography Centre - University of Southampton. Her Ph.D. was sponsored by the Italian National Research Council - Institute of Marine Sciences, in Venice. She has spent more than 6 months at sea on oceanographic sampling campaigns, in the Mediterranean Sea, Pacific Ocean and the North Sea. Her research interests encompass: the application of robotics for observational oceanography and environmental monitoring. She is interested in the entire process of data collection, from the device design to the deployment setting and, ultimately, in the resulting data and data interpretation. Innovative sensors and autonomous platforms need a cross disciplinary approach in order to thrive. New, sustainable, smart platforms can push the boundaries of observational oceanography, coastal management, offshore sites functioning and much more. Groundbreaking technology can result in a new generation of data that can give us the needed insight to embrace sustainable development and ocean protection. 

Robotics for Extreme Environments: an Ocean Treasure

The ocean's most extreme environments— such as polar regions — present some of the greatest challenges for exploration, yet they hold critical insights into climate dynamics, biodiversity, and planetary health. Robotics enables sustained, adaptive observation where human access is limited. This talk showcases recent developments in marine robotic platforms and multi-sensor systems designed to operate in such harsh conditions. Drawing on fieldwork from campaigns in the polar regions, it explores the integration of advanced sensors and autonomous capabilities to enhance data collection. Emphasis is placed on implementing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles to ensure that the information gathered is usable across disciplines and infrastructures. 

Daniel Zitterbart is an Associate Scientist with tenure in the Department of Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). He leads the Marine Animal Remote Sensing (MARS) Lab, where his interdisciplinary team of biologists, engineers, and physicists uses a range of remote sensing technologies—including photography, radar, satellite imagery, passive acoustics, and robotics—to study the behavior and ecology of marine top predators, particularly penguins and large whales in the Southern Hemisphere.

Dr. Zitterbart's research aims to uncover general principles of animal movement and collective behavior, using these insights as indicators of ecosystem health. His work bridges ecology and technology, offering novel perspectives on monitoring marine life and the changing ocean environment.

Biography

Peter's research is a hybrid between Physical Oceanography and Glaciology, focused on interactions between the ocean and the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. This centers on the oceanic and atmospheric processes that drive melt at the Ice Sheet margins, and the fate of the resultant meltwater. 

Ice on the Move: What observing Antarctica’s ice shelves now with underwater robotics can tell us about future sea level rise  Mass loss from Earth’s ice sheets is the largest source of global sea level rise, with dramatic increases projected to raise the ocean by up   to 0.78 meters by 2100. However, large uncertainties surround this projection because of complexities in how signals propagate from ice sheet margins to their interiors. Ice sheets lose most of their mass from melting and calving along their coastline. Very few direct observations of the coastal ice and ocean system exist to constrain models used to simulate future ice sheet behavior. In this talk I present four years of ice and ocean   observations collected in Antarctica with the underwater vehicle Icefin. These cutting-edge observations provide information of how the ice and ocean interact in multiple settings from the fast-changing Thwaites Glacier to the dormant Kamb Ice Stream. The results illuminate a fascinating coupled  system where variations in ocean properties interact with small-scale ice slopes to drive melting and freezing over a range of magnitudes. This provides necessary information that can be integrated into models to improve sea level rise projections. I encourage everyone who is curious about   ice, ocean, and underwater robotics to attend my talk. Don’t worry there will be plenty of cool videos! 

Biography

Robert F. Shepherd is a Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, where he leads the Organic Robotics Laboratory (ORL). His research focuses on soft robotics, bioinspired design, and advanced manufacturing to improve machine autonomy and performance.

He has received several honors, including the AFOSR and ONR Young Investigator Awards, and is a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. His work has been featured by the BBC, Discovery Channel, and PBS NOVA.

Dr. Shepherd is the co-founder of Llume – Organic Robotics Corporation, which uses patented Light Lace® technology to monitor fatigue and performance levels with high accuracy. He is also the co-founder of MAV Unlimited, Inc., a company developing the next generation of additive manufacturing machines.

High Energy Capacity Robots via Embodied Energy for Agriculture and Oceanography

In this talk, I will describe the multifunctional use of hydraulic fluid as energy storage and force transduction and how it increases the system energy density of robots. Two different classes of Redox Flow Batteries (RFBs) will be presented. These liquid battery systems are composed into different crawling and swimming robot configurations, performing different missions. One robot will be presented that performs multiple swimming modes. Finally, a low cost/watt soft energy harvester will be presented as a potential method for recharging these marine robots.