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Barbara Mazzolai

Associate Director for Robotics; Director of Bioinspired Soft Robotics Lab
Senior Researcher Tenured - Principal Investigator
Bioinspired Soft Robotics
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About

Barbara Mazzolai is Associate Director for Robotics and Director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). From February 2011 to March 2021 she was the Director of the IIT Center for Micro-BioRobotics (CMBR) in Pontedera. 
From July 2012 to 2017, she also covered the role of Deputy Director for the Supervision and Organization of the IIT Centers Network.
Her research activities are in the areas of biologically-inspired robotics and soft robotics. In this context, she is the pioneer of the fields of plant-inspired robots and growing robots.

She graduated in Biology at the University of Pisa (Italy) in 1995, obtained an International Master Diploma in Eco-Management in 1998 at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (SSSA), and in 2011 the Ph.D. in Microsystems Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. In the years 1999-2009, she was Research Assistant and then Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the SSSA Center for Research in Microengineering (CRIM Lab, now the BioRobotics Institute). In November 2009, she joined IIT at the Center for Micro-BioRobotics (CMBR) as Team Leader, and then from 2011 to 2021 she was the Director CMBR. In 2013, she started her research line on Bioinspired Soft Robotics as Principal Investigator. 

She is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen and Stuttgart, Germany), since 2016; and member of the Advisory Committee of the Cluster on Living Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems - livMatS (Freiburg, Germany), since 2019. She is Member of the International Research and Innovation Advisory Board (IRIAB) of the Università Campus Bio-Medico dì Roma (UCBM) since 2022.

In 2017, from January to July, she was at Imperial College London (UK) as Visiting Faculty of the Aerial Robotics Lab. 

In 2020, she has obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification of Full Professor in Bioengineering.

She has a long experience as researcher and project manager of European projects in the topics of biorobotics, soft robotics and environmental robotics, including OCTOPUS (FP7-231608), HydroNet (FP7-212790), DustBot (FP6-045299), EMECAP (QLK4-CT-2000-00489), and of the SeedBot ESA-ARIADNA Project. From 2012 to 2015 she was the Coordinator of the EU-funded FET-Open PLANTOID project (FP7-293431), for the design of innovative artefacts inspired by plant roots sensing, actuation, and intelligence for environmental exploration and monitoring. She developed the world-first plant-inspired robot, “Plantoid”. Since January 2019, she is the Coordinator of the EU-funded FET-Proactive GrowBot Project (https://www.growbot.eu/), which proposes a disruptively new paradigm of movement in robotics inspired by the moving-by-growing abilities of climbing plants, and aims at developing a new generation of plant-inspired self-growing robots. Since January 2020, she is a National Geographic Explorer with the grant “RoKER - Roots of Knowledge with Environmental Robots”. Since January 2021, Dr. Mazzolai is coordinator of the EU H2020 FET Environmental Intelligence project "I-Seed" (https://www.iseedproject.eu/), which aims at developing self-deployable and biodegradable soft miniaturized robots, inspired by the morphology and dispersion abilities of plant seeds, to perform an environmentally responsible in-situ detection of key environmental parameters in air and topsoil. Since May 2021, she is Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant “I-Wood” (https://iwoodproject.eu/), which proposes a new paradigm of virtual and physical robotic networks inspired by the belowground fungus-mediated inter-plant communication, known as the "Wood Wide Web", and by the associated collective behaviours

She is author and co-author of more than 270 papers appeared in international journals, books, and conference proceedings. She has published some popular science books for adults and children, such as   “La Natura Geniale” (2019) and "Il futuro raccontato dalle piante" (2021) with Longanesi Ed.; "Perché i robot sono stupidi e altre domande sulla tecnologia", with Federico Taddia (2021) and "L'incredibile Plantoide e i superpoteri del regno vegetale" with Chiara Valentina Segré (2022) (Editoriale Scienza).

Invited as speaker at national and international scientific events, Dr. Mazzolai periodically organizes workshops and special sessions on the topics of soft robotics, bioinspired robotics, plant-inspired growing robots at major conferences for the scientific community and general public. She is member of the Executive Advisory Board of Advanced Intelligent Systems; member of the Editorial Board of Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Soft Robotics, Biomimetics, Robotics & Automation Letters; member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Advanced Materials Technologies; and Associated Editor for IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, Frontiers in Bionics and Biomimetics, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI - Soft Robotics

In 2022, she was the General Co-Chair of the IEEE RoboSoft Conference. She served as Associated Editor for ICRA 2016-2020, IEEE RA-L 2016-2020, IROS 2013, 2017, 2020, as Interdisciplinary Program Co-Chair for RoboSoft 2018-2019, Government Forum Co-Chair for IROS 2016, Publicity Co-Chair for BIOROB 2012, workshop Co-Chair for I-RIM 2019 and for RoboSoft 2020. She is member of the IEEE, of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), of the Materials Research Society (MRS) and of the Italian Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM).

All Publications
2023
Cecchini L., Mariani S., Ronzan M., Mondini A., Pugno N.M., Mazzolai B.
4D Printing of Humidity-Driven Seed Inspired Soft Robots
Advanced Science
2023
Pirrone S.R.M., Del Dottore E., Sibille L., Mazzolai B.
A 3-D DEM numerical model to support the design of exploratory artificial systems
74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC)
Poster Conference
2023
Mariani S., Cecchini L., Mondini A., Del Dottore E., Ronzan M., Filippeschi C., Pugno N.M., Sinibaldi E., Mazzolai B.
A Bioinspired Plasmonic Nanocomposite Actuator Sunlight-Driven by a Photothermal-Hygroscopic Effect for Sustainable Soft Robotics
Advanced Materials Technologies
Article Journal
2023
Pirrone S.R.M., Del Dottore E., Sibille L., Mazzolai B.
A Methodology to Investigate the Design Requirements of Plant Root-Inspired Robots for Soil Exploration
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, (no. 6), pp. 3438-3445
Article Journal
2023
Das R., Babu S.P.M., Visentin F., Palagi S., Mazzolai B.
An earthworm-like modular soft robot for locomotion in multi-terrain environments
Scientific Reports, vol. 13, (no. 1)
Awards and Achievements
2022
Mazzolai B.
Member of the International Research and Innovation Advisory Board (IRIAB) of the Università Campus Bio-Medico dì Roma (UCBM)
2022
Mazzolai B.
Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Max Planck Queensland Centre (MPQC) for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices
2022
Mazzolai B.
Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Max Planck (Potsdam and Stuttgart) - Queensland University of Technology Center on Extracellular Matrix Research
2022
Mazzolai B.
Membro del gruppo di lavoro di supporto alle attività tecnico-scientifiche dell’ASI – Salute nello spazio, Biotecnologie e Ricerca in microgravità
2022
Fiorello I., Meder F., Mazzolai B.
Pre-acceleration startup program - Bocconi4innovation (B4i)