Keynote Speaker
Dezhen Song
Biography: Dezhen Song is a Professor and Deputy Chair with Department of Robotics in MBZ University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), Abu Dhabi, UAE, and was a Professor and former Associate Department Head with Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA. Song received his Ph.D. in 2004 from University of California, Berkeley; MS and BS from Zhejiang University in 1998 and 1995, respectively. Song's primary research area is robot perception, networked robots, visual navigation, automation, and stochastic modeling. From 2008 to 2012, Song was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO). From 2010 to 2014, Song was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE). Song was a Senior Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) from 2017 to 2021 and currently is a Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE). He is also a multimedia editor and chapter author for Springer Handbook of Robotics. His research has resulted in one monograph and more than 150 refereed conferences and journal publications. Dr. Song received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2007, the Kayamori Best Paper Award of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the 2022 Best Paper Award of the LCT 2022 Affiliated Conference, the 1st place in the GM/SAE AutodriveChallenge II competition in 2022, and the Amazon Research Award in 2020.
Speech Information
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Speaker: Prof. Dezhen Song
Affiliations: Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Speaker: Prof. Yang GAO
Affiliations: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China
Yang GAO
Biography: Professor Yang Gao FIET FRAeS, is a world-renowned space roboticist with over 20 years of R&D and space mission experience including European Space Agency (ESA)’s ExoMars, Proba-3 and lunar VMMO; UK's CLEAR, MoonLITE and Moonraker; and China's Chang'E-3. She has led research projects for the European Space Agency, UK Space Agency, UK Research and Innovation, the European Union, and industrial companies. Her honours include the Mulan Award for Contributions to Science, Technology and Engineering (2019) and Distinguished Global Leadership Award (2025), and research under her leadership has won IAF 3AF Edmond Brun Silver Medal (2013), COSPAR Outstanding Paper Award (2016), ESA SysNova Challenge First Prize (2018), IEEE-ICRA Space Workshop Wiley Poster Award First Prize (2020), and Sino-UK Entrepreneurship Competition First Prize (2022), among others.
Professor Gao joined The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in mid-2025 as Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. At HKUST, she founded the Centre for AI and Robotics in Space Sustainability (CAIRSS), dedicated to developing cutting-edge technologies for orbital debris removal, autonomous space systems, and in-situ extraterrestrial resource utilization to provide innovative solutions for crewed/uncrewed deep space missions. She is also the Co-Director of HKUST's Space Science & Technology Institute and the Acting Director of Hong Kong Space Robotics & Engergy Centre. Prior to joining HKUST, she spent over twenty years in the UK as Professor of Robotics and Director of the Robotics Centre at King's College London. Earlier, as Professor of Space Autonomous Systems at the University of Surrey, she founded and led the award-winning Space Technology and Autonomous Robotic systems Laboratory (STAR-LAB).
On the global stage, Professor Gao holds several leadership positions in space and robotics, including Co-Chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE-RAS) Space Robotics Technical Committee, Editor-in-Chief of Wiley's Journal of Field Robotics, and Mentor for the United Nations' "Space4Women" program towards Sustainable Development Goals.
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Frank Allgöwer
Biography: Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany and professor in the mechanical engineering department there. His current research interests are to develop new methods for data-based control, optimization-based control and networked control. Frank has published over 500 papers and received several recognitions for his work including the IFAC Outstanding Service Award, the IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award, the State Teaching Award of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and the Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Frank has been the President of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for the years 2017-2020. He was Editor for the journal Automatica from 2001 to 2015 and is editor for the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Science book series. He was Vice-president for Technical Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society for the years 2013/14 and was on the EUCA Council for 2001-2004. From 2012 until 2020, Frank also served as Vice-President of Germany's most important research funding agency, the German Research Foundation (DFG).
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Speaker: Prof. Frank Allgöwer
Affiliations: University of Stuttgart, Germany
Speaker: Prof. Alessandra Sciutti
Affiliations: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy
Alessandra Sciutti
Biography: Alessandra Sciutti is a Tenure Track Researcher and head of the CONTACT (COgNiTive Architecture for Collaborative Technologies) Unit of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Bioengineering and her Ph.D. in Humanoid Technologies from the University of Genova in 2010. After two research periods in the USA and Japan, in 2018, she was awarded the ERC Starting Grant wHiSPER (www.whisperproject.eu), focused on the investigation of joint perception between humans and robots. She has published more than 100 papers and abstracts in international journals and conferences, coordinates the ERC POC Project ARIEL (Assessing Children Manipulation and Exploration Skills), and has participated in the coordination of the CODEFROR European IRSES project (https://www.codefror.eu/). She is currently Chief Editor of the HRI Section of Frontiers in Robotics and AI and Associate Editor for several journals, including the International Journal of Social Robotics, the IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, and Cognitive System Research. She is an ELLIS scholar and the corresponding co-chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee for Cognitive Robotics. Her research aims to investigate the sensory and motor mechanisms underlying mutual understanding in human-human and human-robot interaction.
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Cagatay Basdogan
Biography: Prof. Basdogan is a member of faculty in College of Engineering at Koc University since 2002. Before joining to Koc University, he was a senior member of technical staff at Information and Computer Science Division of NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1999 to 2002. At JPL, he worked on 3D reconstruction of Martian models from stereo images captured by a rover and their haptic visualization on Earth. He moved to JPL from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a research scientist and principal investigator at MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and a member of the MIT Touch Lab from 1996 to 1999. At MIT, he was involved in the development of algorithms that enable a user to touch and feel virtual objects through a haptic device (a force-reflecting robotic arm). He received his Ph.D. degree from Southern Methodist University in 1994 and worked on medical simulation and robotics for Musculographics Inc. at Northwestern University Research Park for two years before moving to MIT. Prof. Basdogan conducts research and development in the areas of human-machine interfaces, control systems, robotics, mechatronics, human-robot interaction, biomechanics, computer graphics, and virtual reality technology. In particular, he is known for his work in the area of human and machine haptics (sense of touch) with applications to medical robotics and simulation, robotic path planning, micro/nano/optical tele-manipulation, human-robot interaction, molecular docking, information visualization, and human perception and cognition. In addition to serving in the program and organizational committees of several conferences and journals, he also chaired the IEEE World Haptics Conference in 2011.
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Speaker: Prof. Cagatay Basdogan
Affiliations: Koc University, Turkey