Invited Speakers

Giacinto Barresi is a Professor of Robotics at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, School of Engineering, CATE, UWE Bristol, UK. His research applies cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics to user interfaces and human-machine integration in biomedical (surgical, rehabilitative, prosthetic, assistive) applications. He is Telehealth/Telemedicine Application Chair of the IEEE Telepresence Initiative, Co-Chair of the IEA Technical Committee on Human Factors in Robotics, and a member of the Executive Committee of UK-RAS and the Academic Committee of the RAS section of IEEE UK & Ireland. 

Dr. Barresi's talk will address how approaches of cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics (employing cognitive and neuroscientific methods in human factors) can inform human-robot interaction design in contexts characterised by teleoperation and telepresence.

Dr. Patricia Capsi-Morales is a Senior Research Fellow at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. She obtained her PhD in Information Engineering from the Italian Institute of Technology and the University of Pisa. Her doctoral work, “Neuroscientific and Soft Robotic Principles for a New Generation of Natural Bionic Limbs,” received the IEEE Italy Section 2022 Best PhD Thesis Award. She was also a core member of the SoftHand Pro Team, which won the silver medal at the Cybathlon 2020 Global Edition. Her research interests are on adaptive neurotechnologies for motor rehabilitation and seamless human–robot interaction. She develops bidirectional neural interfaces that enable users to intuitively control and perceive remote or artificial bodies, bridging the gap between intention, action, and sensory feedback. She is an Associate TC Co-Chair for the RAS TC on Neuro-Robotics Systems. 

Dr. Capsi-Morales' talk is titled "When Tools Become Your Body: Quantifying Embodiment in Telepresence and Neuroprosthetics" and will address the importance and implications of embodiment, highlighting the need for robust metrics and more comprehensive studies.

Prof. Sara Falcone is an Assistant Professor at the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Pace University and Co-Director of the Seidenberg Robotics Lab. She earned her PhD from the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Her research sits at the intersection of human–computer interaction, human–robot interaction, and telerobotics, with a particular focus on embodiment, teleoperation, and remote presence. She investigates how wearable and multimodal interactive systems can support more accessible, effective, and engaging remote collaboration. Her work is supported in part by Alfred P. Sloan-funded research.

Dr. Falcone's talk is titled "Unraveling the Complexity of the Sense of Embodiment in Teleoperation" and will address the role that a strong sense of embodiment is critical for enhancing the human teleoperation experience.

Dr. Rousslan Dossa is the Chief Researcher of the Reinforcement Learning Research Team at Araya, Inc., Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. from Kobe University in 2023. His research interests span deep reinforcement learning with an emphasis on self-supervised learning, human cognition-inspired decision-making, neuroscience, and evolutionary computing. His more recent work explores the integration of imitation and reinforcement learning for robotics, neuroscience for brainwave-based user intent decoding, and ergonomic interfaces to design brain-robot interfaces that are intuitive to use and empower humans by autonomously assisting them in daily life.

Dr. Dossa's talk is titled "Toward Ergonomic Brain-Robot Interfaces for Assistive Daily Living: Shared Autonomy and Augmented Reality Systems" and will cover the challenges and successes of integrating non-invasive EEG, EMG, and eye-tracking solutions to enable multi-user, multi-robot teleoperation assistive robotics systems. He will also cover a direct extension of such system to the real-world by leveraging off-the-shelf augmented reality interfaces and generalist robotics manipulation policies for daily living tasks.