Science & Society Seminar #5 with Barbara Mazzolai
Continuing our seminar series, AERG is delighted to announce its 5th "Science & Society" seminar with Prof. Barbara Mazzolai, Deputy Director for Robotics and the Director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genoa.
The event will take place on 22 September 2023 at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa and will be broadcast live.
We look forward to an insightful session with Barbara Mazzolai, who will present a lecture titled:
"The life of robots in natural ecosystems"
If you are interested to join, please get in touch: contact@aerg.eu.
Barbara Mazzolai is the Associate Director for Robotics and the Director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genoa. From February 2011 to March 2021, she served as the Director of the IIT Center for Micro-BioRobotics (CMBR). She earned her Bachelor's degree in Biology (with Honours) from the University of Pisa, Italy, and obtained her Ph.D. in Microsystems Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Between July 2012 and 2017, she held the position of Deputy Director for the Supervision and Organization of the IIT Centers Network. In 2017, she was a Visiting Faculty at the Aerial Robotics Lab, Department of Aeronautics, at Imperial College London.
Barbara Mazzolai is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen and Stuttgart, Germany), as well as a member of the SAB of the Max Planck Queensland Centre (MPQC) for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices. Additionally, she is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Cluster on Living Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems - livMatS (Freiburg, Germany).
Her research work revolves around bioinspired soft robotics, where she combines principles from both biology and engineering to advance technological innovation and scientific knowledge. She has been the Coordinator of several EU-funded projects in this field, including PLANTOID, GrowBot, and I-SEED. In May 2021, she began her European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant titled "I-Wood," focusing on Forest Intelligence: robotic networks inspired by the Wood Wide Web. Throughout her career, she has received numerous awards for her contributions, including the Marisa Bellisario Award and the Medal of the Italian Senate. She is an author and co-author of more than 260 papers published in international journals, books, and conference proceedings. In 2019, she published her book "La Natura Geniale," followed by "Il futuro raccontato dalle piante" (ed. Longanesi) in 2021.
