Simulation phase judging panel
Dr. Carlos Agüero
Simulation phase judging panel
Carlos Agüero is a Consulting Software Engineer at Open Robotics, where he works as a contributor and project lead in open-source simulation projects. Carlos has been part of the Open Robotics team which supported the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, ONR Virtual RobotX competition, and the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
Before joining Open Robotics, Carlos held a faculty position in the Systems Communication Department at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and was Director of the Telematics and Computer Systems Master program. In 2010 and 2011, he was a visiting scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Texas, Austin, and CORAL Research group at Carnegie Mellon University.
Carlos received his Ph. D. from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Computer Science. Carlos's research was focused on multi-robot object localization, task allocation and multi-target object localization. Earlier in his career, Carlos was an active member of the RoboCup community participating in the RoboCup Standard Platform League, where he co-developed a complete robot architecture (Behaviour-based Iterative Control Architecture, BICA) from scratch for the Nao robot which was applied to robot soccer and Alzheimer therapy.
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Dr. Ian Chen
Simulation phase judging panel
Ian Chen is a Software Engineering Supervisor at Open Robotics where he works on commercial, and government funded robotics simulation projects. He is the team lead for the development of the MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge simulator. Ian has been involved in creating simulation platforms for various virtual robotics challenges including the DARPA Robotics Challenge, the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, and the NASA Space Robotics Challenge.
Prior to joining Open Robotics, Ian was a software engineer at Nokia where he contributed to the open-source Qt framework. Prior to Nokia, Ian was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland during which he worked on visualization, 3D perception, and human-robot interaction projects.
Ian received his PhD from the University of Auckland. His PhD research focused on applying mixed reality techniques to enhance robot simulations, creating a world where real robots are capable of sensing and physically interacting with virtual objects.
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Dr. Brian Gerkey
Simulation phase judging panel
Brian Gerkey is co-founder and CEO of Open Robotics, an organization which drives the development and adoption of open software and hardware for robotics. Prior to Open Robotics, Brian was the Director of Open-Source Development at Willow Garage; Computer Scientist at SRI Artificial Intelligence Center; Post- Doctoral Scholar at Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; and Post- Doctoral Research Fellow at University of Southern California Robotics Research Laboratory. Brian is a strong believer in, frequent contributor to, and constant beneficiary of open-source technology.
Brian received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. Brian is a co-author of the book “Programming Robots with ROS” and the author/co-author of over 20 journal articles and invited and conference papers.
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Veena Hausen
Simulation phase judging panel
Veena Hausen is a Program Manager at ASPIRE where she is responsible for managing competition programs that accelerate the creation of transformative technologies and solve tomorrow’s challenges. She is the Program Manager for the MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge.
Before joining ASPIRE, Veena has worked in various organisations across the Netherlands, UAE, India and Germany. Her experience spans from research and development of computer vision algorithms to program managing the development of high-tech software products.
Veena has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
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Dr. Cesare Stefanini
Simulation phase judging panel
Cesare Stefanini is a Full Professor at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, Italy, with the role of Area Leader in Creative Engineering Design. He also served as the Director of the Healthcare Engineering Innovation Center at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi. His core expertise lies in the design and development of bio-robotic systems, often connecting creativity and engineering.
He has published more than 80 articles in high-impact scientific journals. A visiting researcher at Stanford University, he is the recipient of the Intuitive Surgical Inc. Research Grant. He has collaborated with multinational and international companies and holds many patents.
Dr. Stefanini is currently the PI of four research projects, including two international projects on underwater swarm robotics. He is scientific advisor to Medical Micro-instruments SpA, a leading company in the field of robotic surgery; member of the IEEE Societies RAS (Robotics and Automation), EMBS (Engineering in Medicine and Biology) and PES (Power and Energy); and recipient of the Intuitive Surgical Research Award. He received his Ph. D. in Micro Engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
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Dr. Claudio Zito
Simulation phase judging panel
Claudio Zito is a Lead Scientist in Control, AI, and Robotics at the Autonomous Robotics Research Centre (ARRC) at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi (UAE). Claudio’s main research interest is in mapping perception into actions for cognitive models where he concentrates on planning grasping and manipulative actions for robots operating in partially observable environments. Prior to joining TII, Claudio was a senior research fellow at the Extreme Robotics Lab, University of Birmingham (UK) where he was also a lecturer in AI.
Claudio obtained his PhD in Robotics at the University of Birmingham (UK). In his career, Claudio has published 20+ peer-reviewed papers on cognitive models for robotics and contributed to several EU FP7 projects and UK research grants. He is also a Review Editor on the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Neurorobotics.
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