Justin Werfel is a senior research scientist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where he works on topics in complex and emergent systems, including swarm robotics, termite behavior, engineered molecular nanosystems, and evolutionary theory. He leads the Designing Emergence Laboratory, and works closely with a number of other collaborating labs. This talk will take place as

The past few years have witnessed significant progress in the field of legged locomotion and manipulation. This is mainly due to the availability of high-performance hardware as well as development of algorithms that scale to high-dimensional, hybrid and under-actuated systems. In this talk, I will present my recent research efforts, mainly on the algorithmic side,

Mario di Bernardo is Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy and Visiting Professor of Nonlinear Systems and Control at the University of Bristol, U.K. He currently serves as Deputy pro-Vice Chancellor for Internationalization at the University of Naples and coordinates the research area and PhD program on Modeling and

Sabine Hauert is Professor of Swarm Engineering at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her research focuses on making swarms for people, and across scales, from nanorobots for cancer treatment, to larger robots for environmental monitoring, or logistics. Before joining the University of Bristol, Sabine engineered swarms of nanoparticles for cancer treatment at MIT,

Carlo Pinciroli is an Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator of the Robotics Engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), where he leads the NEST (Novel Engineering for Swarm Technologies) Lab. With additional appointments in WPI’s Artificial Intelligence Program, Computer Science, and Fire Protection Engineering, his research centers on swarm robotics. He is the creator of

Oliver Kroemer’s research focuses on developing algorithms and representations that enable robots to learn versatile manipulation skills over time. By equipping robots with the ability to acquire new skills and adapt manipulations to novel situations, his work opens up a wide range of potential applications—from assisting the elderly and maintaining parks and public spaces to

Mary Ellen Foster's research focuses on developing artificial agents—primarily robots—that can engage in natural, face-to-face conversations with humans, similar to well-known examples like C-3PO or R2-D2. To achieve such seamless interactions, robots must be equipped to both interpret and produce a variety of social signals, including speech, facial expressions, gestures, and body language. This requires

Giovanni Beltrame is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, where he leads the Making Innovative Space Technology (MIST) Laboratory. At MIST Lab, Giovanni is conducting projects in collaboration with industry and government agencies in areas such as robotics, disaster response, and space exploration. His research interests include the

More info will follow soon. This talk will take place as part of SCIoI member Svetlana Levit’s seminar “Selected Topics in Robot Learning,” which explores how advances in machine learning are helping robots operate in new environments, learn new behaviors, and adapt to changing conditions.