Daniele Pucci

Daniele received the bachelor and master degrees in Control Engineering with highest honors from ”Sapienza”, University of Rome, in 2007 and 2009, respectively. In 2009, he also received the ”Excellence Path Award” from Sapienza. In 2013, he earned the PhD title with a thesis prepared at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France, under the supervision of Tarek Hamel and Claude Samson. From 2013 to 2017, he has been a postdoc at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) working within the EU project CoDyCo. From August 2017 to August 2021, he has been the head of the Dynamic Interaction Control lab.  The main lab research focus was on the humanoid robot locomotion problem, with specific attention on the control and planning of the associated nonlinear systems. Also, the lab has been pioneering Aerial Humanoid Robotics, whose main aim is to make flying humanoid robots. Currently, the lab is implementing iRonCub, the jet-powered flying version of the humaonid robot iCub. Daniele has also been the scientific PI of the H2020 European Project AnDy, he is task leader of the H2020 European Project SoftManBot, and coordinator of the joint laboratory between IIT and Honda JP. In 2019, he was awarded as Innovator of the year Under 35 Europe from the MIT Technology Review magazine. Since 2020 and in the context of the split site PhD supervision program, Daniele is a visiting lecturer at University of Manchester. In July 2020, Daniele was selected to represent Italy at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI, conceived by Canada and France during their G7 presidencies) for the working group on COVID-19 response. Since September 1st 2021, Daniele is the PI leading  the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence research line at IIT. The research team combines AI and Mechanics to devise the next generation of Humanoid Robots that will help mankind face the next challenges.