Imperial College London, UK
Topic: Human Neuromechanics
Bio: Etienne Burdet, Chair in Human Robotics at Imperial College London and Honorary Professor at University College London, integrates neuroscience and robotics to investigate human motor control. His research focuses on designing efficient assistive devices and training systems for neuro-rehabilitation, which undergo clinical trials and commercialization (e.g., Gripable.co, Myro@tyromotion.com). Etienne Burdet's achievements include receiving the 2015 UK NHS Innovation Challenge Prize, the 2011 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, and the 2009 Apple Research & Technology Support award. He earned his MS in Mathematics, MS in Physics, and PhD from ETH Zurich and has held academic positions globally, including Invited Professorships at Nanyang Technological University, Sorbonne Université, and EPFL.
Topic: Stochastic Control in Human-Robot Systems
Bio: Bastien Berret is a Professor at Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France, since September 2020. He earned his "Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches" (HDR) in November 2017 and has been an Associate Professor and Junior member of the "Institut Universitaire de France" (IUF) from 2017 to 2022. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay (CIAMS laboratory), Orsay, France, starting in 2012. Bastien Berret completed his PhD in mathematics and computational neurosciences at Univ. Bourgogne, Dijon, France, in INSERM U1093 Cognition, Action, and Sensorimotor Plasticity laboratory, under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Paul Gauthier and Prof. Thierry Pozzo from 2005 to 2009, and he conducted postdoctoral research at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy, from 2009 to 2012.
Université Paris-Saclay, France
Technical University of Munich, Germany
Topic: Tactile Control and Learning
Bio: Sami Haddadin is the Director of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence and holds the Chair of Robotics and Systems Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Prior to joining TUM, he was the Chair of the Institute of Automatic Control at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover. Before that, he held various research positions at the German Aerospace Center. He has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions, including several best paper awards at ICRA, IROS, T-RO, RA-L, the George Giralt PhD Award (2012), the IEEE/RAS Early Career Award (2015), the Alfried Krupp Award for Young Professors (2015), the German President’s Award for Innovation in Science and Technology (2017), and the Leibniz Prize (2019). Sami Haddadin is the founder of Franka Emika.
Topic: Passivity-Based Control in Human-Robot Interaction
Bio: Erfan Shahriari is a Research Associate at the Chair of Robotics and Systems Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where he earned his Ph.D. in Planning and Control in Tactile Manipulation. He is also a visiting researcher at the Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to his current role, Erfan conducted research at the Institute of Automatic Control at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, the Robotics Innovation Center at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, and the Chair of Automatic Control Engineering at TUM.
Technical University of Munich, Germany
KFUPM,
Saudi Arabia
Topic: Geometric Control and Optimization
Bio: Ramy Rashad is an Assistant Professor at the Control and Instrumentation department at King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals. He obtained his BSc (2013) and MSc (2015) from the German University in Cairo and his PhD (2021) from the University of Twente (UTwente). He worked for three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Robotics and Mechatronics lab at UTwente and was a finalist for the George Giralt PhD Award (2022). His research interests include geometric modeling, simulation and control of aerial manipulators and port-Hamiltonian systems theory in general.
Topic: Advancing Robotics Research in Nature Machine Intelligence
Bio: Trenton Jerde is a Senior Editor at Nature Machine Intelligence, specializing in motor control and cognition in both humans and machines. He holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Minnesota and has served as a Lecturer at Columbia University and a Visiting Research Professor at New York University. In addition to his editorial role, he has worked as a data scientist and consultant on brain disorders, particularly in collaboration with Medtronic on deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease. His research interests include neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Nature Machine Intelligence, USA