Lucia Beccai

Lucia Beccai is Tenured Senior Researcher at IIT, leader of Soft BioRobotics Perception (SBRP) research line, and until 2009 was Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the Biorobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy. She collaborated and had scientific responsibility in many international projects at European and intercontinental level. She is interested in soft and embodied sensing processes, with a focus on touch, to enable soft perceptive robots of natural-like physical interactions, like in bioinspired soft grasping and manipulation. Some specific topics include soft tactile systems inspired by natural mechanotransduction and morphology, and active touch by soft robotic systems, like versatile continuum grippers inspired from elephant trunk. Currently she is the coordinator of the PROBOSCIS project (EU H2020-FET Open 863212). She serves as Associate Editor for some journals including Scientific Reports, IEEE RA-L and Frontiers in Robotics and AI for which she received the 2021 Outstanding Associate Editor Award. and as expert evaluator for the EU project proposals and for some international research agencies. She filed 3 patents and has authored more than 100 articles on refereed international journals, books, and international conference proceedings.