Organizers
Pham Huy Nguyen
Dr. Pham Huy Nguyen is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics at Empa, Switzerland and a visiting researcher at the Aerial Robotics Lab at Imperial College London, UK. His research is focused on the development of various novel physically intelligent, bio-inspired aerial robotic platforms that utilize soft sensing and actuation schemes. Previously, he received the B.S.E in Mechatronics from the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013 and the M.Sc. degree in Robotics from the EMARO (European Masters in Advanced Robotics) program in 2015. The EMARO program is a two year program, with the first year at École Centrale de Nantes, France, and the second year at Università Degli Studi di Genova, Italy. He received the Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the Arizona State University, USA, in Fall 2020.
André Tristany Farinha
André Farinha is a postdoctoral researcher of the Laboratory for Sustainability Robotics at Empa, Switzerland. His research focuses on the modelling and system development of bio-inspired soft aerial-aquatic robots. He obtained his PhD in Aeronautics from Imperial College London UK in 2022, where he worked on remote sensing with MAVs in multi-terrain environments. He was previously at Técnico Lisbon for his BSc and MSc (leavers 2016) and at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics for a Research Master in 2018. He has also conducted research at UT Austin and Tokyo Institute of Technology as a visiting researcher.
Fabian Wiesemüller
Fabian Wiesemüller is currently a PhD student at the Aerial Robotics Lab at Imperial College London, UK and the Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics at Empa, Switzerland. His research is focused on the development of various biodegradable technologies for transient robotic platforms that utilize sustainable sensing and actuation schemes. Previously, he received the BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zürich, Switzerland in 2017 and 2019 respectively. During his studies he was active as project-manager, systems-engineer and coach for various extracurricular projects, including ARIS - a student association dedicated to developing experimental sounding rockets. His MSc thesis was conducted as a visiting researcher at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena USA.
Sukho Song
Sukho Song is a group leader at the Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics at Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) in Switzerland and a visiting researcher at the Aerial Robotics Laboratory at Imperial College London in the UK. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Reconfigurable Robotics Laboratory and the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces at EPFL. He also spent his postdoctoral tenure in the Soft Robotics and Bionics Laboratory at Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. in the department of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, USA in 2017. During his studies, he was also a research associate in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany. He received his undergraduate degree in Aeronautics and Space Engineering and master's degree in Nanomechanics at Tohoku University, Japan in 2005 and 2007, respectively. Dr. Song's research interest is design and manufacturing of multi-scale soft robots that combine microscale features with a larger scale soft robotic architecture for new functionalities. Application areas of interest include, but not limited, soft bioelectronic interfaces for nervous system, electronics-free control of soft robots, bioinspired soft adhesion, and biohybrid robots.
Salua Hamaza
Prof. Salua Hamaza is Assistant Professor in Aerial Robotics & Director of the BioMorphic Intelligence Lab at TU Delft, Netherlands. She is also Research Fellow at Imperial College London, Aerial Robotics Lab. Her research focuses on the development of compliant aerial robots capable of interacting with objects and the environment for manipulation (primarily), and locomotion. Her robotic solutions take inspiration from biological systems for flying and interaction tasks, leveraging compliance in hardware and software to advance aerial robots’ autonomy.
Previously, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Aerial Robotics Laboratory, Imperial College London, United Kingdom. She obtained her Ph.D. in Robotics and Autonomous Systems from Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol, in 2019. She was visiting researcher at the GRVC at University of Seville, Spain, during 2018. Prior to the PhD she was researcher at RAM at University of Twente, Netherlands. She received the MSc degree from the University of Bologna and TU Delft.
She is recipient of the 3rd prize Best UK PhD in Robotics, 2019 edition, and of 2 Best Paper Awards from IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. She is Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Aerial & Field Robotics. Since 2021, she is the TU Delft Aerospace Engineering awardee of a new research lab, principal investigator in the Growth Fund NextGen Future Smart Industries, and leading a team of 6 PhD students.
Aníbal Ollero Baturone
Prof. Anibal Ollero is full Professor Head of GRVC at University Seville, and Scientific Advisor of the Center for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) also in Seville. He has been full professor at the Universities of Santiago in the Vigo Campus and Malaga (Spain). In all these institutions he has funded research groups and laboratories. He has been also researcher at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA) and LAAS-CNRS (Toulouse, France). He authored more than 800 publications, including 9 books and 235 papers in journals of the citation index and has been editor of 13 books. He has been supervisor or co-supervisor of 47 PhD Thesis. He leads more than 170 research projects and contracts with industries, participating in more than 35 projects of the European Research Programmes being coordinator of 7 and associated or deputy coordinator of 3. He is the principal investigator of the Advanced ERC Grant GRIFFIN on bioinspired aerial robots. In these projects he developed several world-wide innovations, particularly in aerial robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the aerial robotic manipulation, the fully autonomous landing on mobile platforms, the transportation of a load by means of several autonomous helicopters, and the cooperation of multiple unmanned aerial systems for detection and monitoring applications. He received 28 Research awards including Spanish National Award in Research (Engineering), Rei Jaume I in New Technologies (2019), Global Winner of the Innovation Radar Prize of the European Commission in the Information and Communication Technologies 2017, elected between the three European Innovators of the Year 2017 and included between the European personalities of the Year 2017, between others.
Mirko Kovač
Prof. Mirko Kovac is Head of the Materials and Technology Center of Robotics at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. He is also Director of the Aerial Robotics Laboratory at Imperial College London and Royal Society Wolfson Fellow. His research is focused on the development of flying and biohybrid soft robotic solutions for digital infrastructure systems. Prof. Kovac's particular specialization is in robot design, hardware development, and multi-modal robot mobility. Previously, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory as part of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. with the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) in 2005. During his studies, he was a research associate with the University of California in Berkeley USA, RIETER Automotive Switzerland, the WARTSILA Diesel Technology Division in Switzerland, and CISERV in Singapore. Since 2006, he has presented his work in more than 70 international proceedings and journals and has won several best paper awards. He has also delivered more than 30 keynote lectures and he regularly acts as an advisor to government, investment funds, and industry on robotics opportunities.