The Speakers

Johannes Englsberger received his Dipl.-Ing. degree (equivalent to a Master’s degree) in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2009. In 2010, he joined the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, as a research scientist. In 2016, he received the Dr.-Ing. degree (equivalent to a PhD) from TUM. His PhD thesis, “Combining reduced dynamics models and whole-body control for agile humanoid locomotion,” was awarded the Georges Giralt PhD Award 2017 for the best European doctoral thesis in robotics.

In 2019, he was appointed team leader of DLR’s legged locomotion group. In addition to his scientific career at DLR, he joined team IHMC (Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, USA) as a visiting researcher and successfully participated in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC).

More recently, Johannes Englsberger co-founded Versatile Robotics GmbH, a DLR spin-off company providing advanced multi-task control technologies for complex robotic systems, and serves as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). His work bridges fundamental research and industrial deployment, with a focus on robust, safe, and scalable control frameworks for autonomous and interactive robots.

Serena Ivaldi is a senior research scientist (directrice de recherche) and head of the Human Centered Robotics Team (HUCEBOT) in the Inria Center of the University of Lorraine (formerly Inria Nancy Grand-Est) and Loria. Her research is currently focused on robots collaborating with humans.She is interested in combining machine learning with control to improve the prediction, adaptation, and interaction skills of robots. She strongly believes in user evaluation, i.e., making potential end-users evaluate our technologies, to improve usability, trust, and acceptance. She is the coordinator of the AS3 project “Decision, Learning and Social Interaction” of the French PEPR “organic robotics” program, and holds the Robotics & AI Chair of the Cluster IA ENACT project.

She served as the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Social Robotics (2021-2024), Associate Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2017-2021), for which she received the IEEE RA-L Distinguished Service Award as Outstanding Associate Editor. She was the Program Chair of IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2019, IEEE ARSO 2023, and the General Chair of IEEE-RAS HUMANOIDS 2024. She served the GDR Robotique (the French Robotics Society) as co-lead of the GT7 Humanoid Robotics (2021-2023). She also has been serving IEEE RAS as co-chair of the ICRA Steering Committee (2022-2023) and since 2022 she is Associate Vice-President of the IEEE RAS MAB.

Fabio Puglia is the Founder and President of Oversonic Robotics. He holds a degree in Physics and Mathematics specializing in Astrophysics from the University of Milan, President Fabio Puglia has diverse experience ranging from robotics to automation. In 2013, Fabio Puglia led a project in Tel Aviv involving European and Israeli players in Water Management. A year later, in 2014, he signed international technological partnership agreements in Abu Dhabi in the presence of former Prime Minister Gianni Letta. In 2017, he participated in the ICT congress in Pasadena organized by NASA, discussing the innovative heat recovery system into energy developed by ISC, a company he founded in Carate Brianza. In 2020, he met Paolo Denti and together they decided to launch a startup developing advanced robotics systems.