Organizers-old | DSRS 2023

Organizers

Organizing committee of the Dutch Soft Robotics Symposium 2023

Herman van der Kooij

Full Professor at University of Twente

Ali Sadeghi is an assistant professor at the University of Twente, where he directs the Soft Robotics Lab. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2013 (cum laude) in the field of Micro-BioRobotics from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy. After his Ph.D., he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Bioinspired Soft Robotics group of the Italian Institute of Technology (iit) where his research was focused on the design and manufacturing of soft robots inspired by biological models such as plants, sea urchins, and octopuses. Inspired by plant movements, he pioneered the new concept of “Growing Robots” particularly by incorporating additive manufacturing technology as part of the robot structure. Ali’s research focuses on assembly integrated additive manufacturing of fiber-reinforced soft robots, using new types of materials, sensing, and actuation techniques.

Prof. Dr. ir. Herman van der Kooij, chairs the BioMechatronics group. He received his Phd with honors (cum laude) in 2000 and is professor in Biomechatronics and Rehabilitation Technology at the Department of Biomechanical Engineering at the University of Twente (0.8 fte), and Delft University of Technology (0.2fte), the Netherlands. His expertise and interests are in the field of human balance and motor control, adaptation, and learning. He combines experiments with neuro-mechanical models. His group designed various rehabilitation, wearable robots, diagnostic, and assistive robotics. Examples are the gait rehabilitation robot LOPES and the Mindwalker wearable exoskeleton. He has published over 220 peer-reviewed publications around biomechatronics and human motor control. He is frequently invited as (keynote) speaker at international conferences. He received several award, among were the prestigious Dutch VIDI and VICI personnel grants for excellent researchers in 2001 and 2015 respectively. He was associate editor of IEEE TBME and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, member of IEEE EMBS technical committee of Biorobotics and of the advisory board of the IEEE conference BIOROB, chair of the IEEE BIOROB2018 and ICORR2022 conference, and member of numerous scientific program committees in the field of rehabilitation robotics, bio robotics, and assistive devices. He is the president elect of the International Consortium for Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR). He participated in eight EU projects and was the coordinator of the European FP7 project Symbitron. Currently he leads the Dutch national program Wearable Robotics and the Dutch national 4TU Soft Robotics program.

Ali Sadeghi

Assistant Professor at University of Twente

Aimée Sakes

Assistant Professor at TU Delft

Dr. ir. Aimée Sakes is an assistant professor at the Biomedical Engineering Department (BMechE – BITE group) of the faculty Mechanical, Maritime & Materials Engineering (3mE) at TUD, where she earned both her MSc and PhD titles with honors (2013, 2017). Her research focuses on the development of bio-inspired soft instrumentation based on shooting and transport mechanisms found in nature, such as the chameleon tongue, ovipositors of parasitic wasps, and snake locomotion. Her work has resulted in a range of novel prototypes, among which a series of innovative impulse catheters, the world’s first steerable 3D-printed bipolar electrosurgical grasper, and a new type of transport mechanism inspired by the ovipositor (egg-laying needle) of parasitic wasps (patent pending). For her work, she has been awarded the best PhD thesis on a cardiovascular topic in 2019, best female PhD Cum Laude of the TUD in 2018, the journal on Cardio-Vascular Engineering and Technology (CVET) Most Downloaded Article Award in 2017, and the Medical Delta Young Talent – Scientist Award in 2017.

Guillermo Amador

Assistant Professor at Wageningen University

Guillermo J Amador is an assistant professor in the Experimental Zoology group at Wageningen University and Research. He obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA in 2015, where his thesis, titled How Insects Stay Clean, was awarded Best PhD Thesis award by the Sigma Xi organization. After his PhD, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Physical Intelligence group at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, and then a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Leading Fellow in the departments of Process & Energy and Bionanoscience at TU Delft. Guillermo is an experimentalist interested in interfacial phenomena within the context of biology, including how animals stick to surfaces when climbing or hunting. Through his work, he will shed light on the physical mechanisms dictating biological form and its evolution, as well as motivate and develop bio-inspired solutions for controlled locomotion and mass transfer.

Irene Kuling

Assistant Professor at TU Eindhoven

Irene Kuling is an assistant professor in the Dynamics and Control group within the department of Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. She earned her Ph.D. degree in 2016 from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam on human proprioception and its applications in haptics. Her thesis was part of the STW (now TTW) Perspectief program H-Haptics, a multi-disciplinary collaboration between several Dutch universities on human-centered haptics including tele-operation systems and shared control. In 2017, she was rewarded a NWO Rubicon grant and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the IoNS (Institute of NeuroScience) at Université catholique de Louvain. Before joining Eindhoven University of Technology she was research scientist at TNO, working on the i-Botics program on tele-manipulation robots and embodiment. Her research interests focus on Haptics and Soft Robotics and includes human haptic perception, tele-manipulation, haptic design and human-robot interaction.

Michaël Wiertlewski

Assistant Professor at TU Delft

Michaël Wiertlewski is Assistant Professor at the Cognitive Robotics Department of the TU Delft in the Netherlands. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie under the auspices of the Laboratoire d'Intégration des Systèmes et des Technologies of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA-LIST) in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France. In 2012, he joined the Neuroscience and Robotics (NxR) lab at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, USA, where he studied the physics of ultrasonic friction-modulation. From 2015 to 2019 he was CNRS Chargé de Recherche at Aix-Marseille university. He received the Early Career Award from the Technical Committee on Haptics in 2017. His main research interests include the design of tactile interfaces and sensors, the physics of the skin/surface interaction and tactile perception of human and robots.

Nick Willemstein

PhD Student at University of Twente

Nick Willemstein is a PhD Student at the department of Biomechanical Engineering at the University of Twente. His research focusses on the 3D printing of soft robotics. Specifically, focusing on thermoplastic elastomers for soft (sensorized) actuators and sensors. In addition, he completed his EngD Robotics degree at the University of Twente on Consolidation during Fused Deposition Modeling of Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites.