Prof. George A. Bekey is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. His research interests include autonomous robotic systems, human-robot interaction and robot ethics. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from UCLA. Following employment at Beckman Instruments and TRW Systems he joined the faculty at USC in 1962. He served as Chairman of the Electrical Engineering-Systems Department from 1978 to 1982, Chairman of the Computer Science Department from 1984 to 1989 and Associate Dean for Research of the USC School of Engineering from 1999 to 2001. He has published over 200 papers and several books in robotics, biomedical engineering, computer simulation, control systems, and human-machine systems. Dr. Bekey is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He was the Founding Editor of the journal Autonomous Robots, and of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics. During 1996 and 1997 he served as President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. His latest book entitled "Autonomous Robots: from biological inspiration to implementation and control" was published by MIT Press in 2005. George officially retired in 2003, but continues to be active on a part-time basis both at USC and at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, where he is a Research Scholar and a consultant to the College of Engineering. His current research concerns robot ethics and the development of altruistic robots. He is also affiliated with a robotic startup company in Los Angeles.
Dr. Lynette Jones is a Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a recognized leading scientist in the area of haptics and tactile displays. Her research group at MIT has built a number of tactile and thermal displays that have been used in research conducted by both academic and industrial organizations in addition to the U.S. military. Dr. Jones has served on numerous national committees including the Committee on Space Biology and Medicine of the National Research Council. She is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. She has served as Program Chair for the IEEE Symposium on Haptic Interfaces and is Editor-in-Chief of the conference editorial board for the World Haptics Conference. Dr. Jones is author of over 80 referred scientific publications and is the co-author of Human Hand Function a book that provides a detailed analysis of the sensory and motor function of the hand.
Prof. Derek G. Kamper (M’97) received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, in 1992 and 1997, respectively. He currently holds a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and as a Research Scientist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. His research interests include neurorehabilitation, mechatronics, and upper extremity neuromechanics.
Prof. Luigi Villani is Associate Professor of Automatic Control in the Department of Computer and Systems Engineering at University of Naples. His research interests include: identification and adaptive control, fault diagnosis and fault tolerance for dynamical systems, impedance and force control, visual tracking and servoing, redundant and cooperative manipulators, lightweight flexible arms, dexterous manipulation. He is currently involved in the large-scale integrating project DEXMART on dexterous and autonomous dual-arm/hand manipulation, funded by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Programme. He has co-authored more than 100 journal and conference papers and 5 books; among them: the textbook Robotics: Modelling, Planning and Control (Springer, 2009) and the book Robot Force Control (Kluwer, 1999). Since January 2000 he is an Associate Editor on the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society, since January 2005 he is an Associate Editor on the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, and since August 2007 he is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics. He has been in the committee of various international conferences. He is Senior Member of IEEE.
Prof. Haruhisa Kawasaki received M.S. and Dr. degrees from Nagoya University, Japan, in 1974 and 1986 respectively. He is currently a Professor of Faculty of Engineering at Gifu University, Japan. He was a research engineer at NTT's laboratories from 1974 to 1990. After that, he was a Professor of Kanazawa Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1994. During July 1998 to January 1999, he was a visiting professor at University of Surrey, (UK). His research interests are in the areas of robot control, humanoid robot hand, haptic interface in virtual reality, and computer algebra of robotics. Dr. Kawasaki has contributed himself to the community as a member of many organizations, such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ), the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), and the Virtual Reality Society of Japan (VRSJ). He has received several awards, such as the Best Paper Award of World Automation Congress 2004 and the Prizes for Science and Technology of The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan in 2006. At present he is the National Organizing Committee Chair of the 9th International IFAC Symposium on Robot Control (SYROCO 2009). Contact information Haruhisa Kawasaki Professor Department of Human and Information Systems Gifu University 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu, 501-1193 Japan Tel & Fax: +81-58-293-2546 E-mail: h_kawasa@gifu-u.ac.jp http://robo.mech.gifu-u.ac.jp/
Prof. Susan Lederman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Queen's Research Chair at Queen's University (Canada). Her research program has spanned a wide range of topics pertaining to sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and sensory-guided motor processing. More specifically, it has focused on the tactile psychophysics of texture, haptic and multisensory processing of objects and their properties, haptic space perception, and the sensory-guided control of grasping and manipulation. Most recently, she has been investigating haptic face processing. Her research employs both behavioural and neuroscience methodologies. Dr. Lederman has also applied the results of her scientific research toward the solution of a variety of real-world problems including, for example, the design of haptic and multisensory interfaces for teleoperation and virtual-environment systems. She recently co-authored Human Hand Function (Oxford University Press) with Dr. Lynette Jones.
Prof. Gerald Loeb (IEEE M’98, SM’04) received a B.A. (’69) and M.D. (’72) from Johns Hopkins University and did one year of surgical residency at the University of Arizona before joining the Laboratory of Neural Control at the National Institutes of Health (1973-1988). He was Professor of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada (1988-1999) and is now Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurology and Director of the Medical Device Development Facility at the University of Southern California. Dr. Loeb was one of the original developers of the cochlear implant to restore hearing to the deaf and was Chief Scientist for Advanced Bionics Corp. (1994-1999), manufacturers of the Clarion? cochlear implant. Recently he became founding CEO of SynTouch LLC, a start-up company developing tactile sensing technology for prosthetic and robotic manipulanda. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, holder of 55 issued US patents and author of over 200 scientific papers. Most of Dr. Loeb’s current research is directed toward sensorimotor control of paralyzed and prosthetic limbs. His research team developed BION™ injectable neuromuscular stimulators and has been conducting several pilot clinical trials. Other current technologies include biomimetic tactile sensors, inferential extraction of commands from residual shoulder motion and spinal-like regulators for coordination of multiactuator systems. These projects build on Dr. Loeb’s long-standing basic research into the properties and natural activities of muscles, motoneurons, proprioceptors and spinal reflexes. They constitute one of the testbeds in the NSF Engineering Research Center on Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems, for which Dr. Loeb is deputy director.
Prof. Marco Santello is a Professor of Kinesiology and Director of the Neural Control of Movement Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, Arizona, USA. Santello’s work focuses on the human hand as a model to study the neural control, sensorimotor integration and learning of complex movements in both healthy and neurologically impaired individuals. His laboratory utilizes several complementary research approaches including intramuscular and surface electromyography, analysis of spatio-temporal coordination of digit movement and forces, sensory substitution/augmentation via electrotactile stimulation, and modeling. Current research collaborations include projects on neuroprosthetics at ASU and biologically-inspired robotics with Columbia University, Harvard University and the University of Pisa. Dr. Santello has published 30+ peer-reviewed papers and several book chapters on the neural control of the hand. His work has been supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Whitaker Foundation, as well as internal funding by ASU and the Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Santello regularly serves as an Ad Hoc Reviewer for NSF and NIH as well as for neuroscience and neurophysiology journals. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, the Society for the Neural Control of Movement and the International Motor Control Society.
Prof. Peter K. Allen is Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and the founder of the Columbia Robotics Laboratory. He received the A.B. degree from Brown University in Mathematics-Economics, the M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the recipient of the CBS Foundation Fellowship, Army Research Office fellowship and the Rubinoff Award for innovative uses of computers. His current research interests include real-time computer vision, dextrous robotic hands, 3-D modeling and medical robotics. In recognition of his work, Professor Allen has been named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation.
Prof. Veronica J. Santos earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering with a music minor from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a biometry minor from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 2004 and 2007, respectively. From 2000 to 2001, she was a Quality Engineer and Research and Development Engineer at Guidant Corporation in Santa Clara, CA. From 2007 to 2008, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the A. E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Dr. Santos is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Her research interests include hand biomechanics, neural control of movement, prosthetics, robotics, tactile sensors, stochastic modeling, and clinical applications of biomechanical modeling. She has received the Young Investigator Poster Presentation Award from the International Society of Biomechanics (2005), an Exceptional Teaching Assistant Award from the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University (2005), and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2001).
