Keynote Speakers
Tamim Asfour
KIT - Director H²TTamim Asfour holds the chair of Humanoid Robotics Systems at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics and is head of the High Performance Humanoid Technologies Lab (H2T). His current research interest is high performance 24/7 humanoid robotics. Specifically, his research focuses on engineering humanoid robot systems integrating the mechano-informatics of such systems with the capabilities of predicting.
Michele Focchi
University of TrentoMichele Focchi is a leading expert in motion planning and control of quadruped robots, with 16 years of experience in robotics. His research integrates control, optimization, and machine learning to enhance quadruped locomotion in unstructured and challenging environments, and he is widely recognized for pioneering work on heuristic locomotion.
Josie Hughes
EPFL - CREATE LabJosie Hughes is a leading researcher in computational robot design and soft robotics at the EPFL. Her work integrates mechanics, materials science, and digital fabrication to develop bioinspired, high-performance robotic systems with embedded intelligence. She is widely recognized for pioneering approaches to co-design, jointly optimizing robot morphology, materials, and control to enable adaptable and resilient robotic platforms.
Nitish Thakor
Johns Hopkins University School of MedicineNitish Thakor is a professor of biomedical engineering. He also has an appointment in the Whiting School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He conducts research on neurological instrumentation, biomedical signal processing, micro and nanotechnologies, neural prosthesis, clinical applications of neural and rehabilitation technologies, and brain-machine interface. Thakor directs the Laboratory for Neuroengineering and is also the director of the NIH Training Grant on Neuroengineering.