On 31/05/2025, we said goodbye to the vibrant and inspiring Katja Ivanova from Queen Mary University London, who spent a month with us as a FEIT Visiting Scholar 🌟✈️—hosted by Ying. In just a few short weeks, she brought energy, insight, and warmth to the lab 💬💡
Katja delivered two outstanding talks on Learning and🧠🤝—thought-provoking, engaging, and sparking great conversations across FEIT. From deep research discussions to spontaneous bubble tea breaks 🧋😄, she truly embraced the spirit of our group.
It’s always a joy to host someone so open-minded, curious, and collaborative. Katja, thank you for sharing your time, ideas, and positivity with us. We hope to see you again next year or for some of our students to visit you soon!
Journalist(s): Ying
A big shout-out to our visiting student Pim van Wershoven 🇳🇱, who wrapped up his final day with us on 31/05/2025! 🎉 Pim joined us all the way from Eindhoven University of Technology (TuE) and jumped straight into a seriously cool project: a Mechanical Simulator for a Virtual Reality–based Supernumerary Limb 💪🦾🕶️—basically bringing a third arm into VR! 🤯⚙️
But Pim didn’t just bring engineering smarts—he brought culture too! 🇳🇱👨🍳 He organized a Dutch dinner for the team (stroopwafels and all 😋), and by the end of his stay, he had even started embracing our lab’s famous bubble tea obsession 🧋😄.
It’s been such a pleasure having Pim with us—your creativity, kindness, and collaborative spirit left a real mark. Wishing you all the best in your next adventure, Pim! 🚀🌍 You’ll always have a place in the Human Robotics Lab family.
Journalist(s): Ying
We’re happy to share that Alireza Keramati has recently passed his PhD confirmation. Congratulations Ali K!
Ali is working on the emerging field of Soft Robotics, with the focus on exploring the application of origami-inspired mechanical metamaterials in soft pneumatic actuators. His innovative designs aim to enable safer physical human-robot interactions and achieve complex motions using simple inputs, opening exciting possibilities for assistive and wearable robotics.
Ali has made a good progress in his first year and just submitted his first journal paper to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL). We’re looking forward to seeing more of his contributions in the years ahead!
Well done, Ali, and congrats again!
Journalist(s): Alireza M.
Earlier this month, our research group had the pleasure of attending RehabWeek 2025, a unique biennial gathering that brings together eight major societies in rehabilitation technology under one roof. This year’s event took place from May 12–16 in the city of Chicago, IL, and we were lucky to be greeted by sunshine rather than snow – a small miracle, we were told, considering Chicago’s springtime unpredictability!
Representing our group were Tomislav (research fellow), Jia Quan (JQ) (PhD student), and Denny (our group lead). JQ made his conference debut with a poster presentation exploring whether learning from demonstration could be used to capture clinicians’ intended upper limb movements for robot-assisted neurorehabilitation, which earned him a spot as a Finalist for the Best Poster Award. Not bad for a first conference—well done, JQ!
Meanwhile, Tomislav presented findings from his extensive study on gait stability during both natural and constrained walking. His session sparked great discussions and plenty of interest from attendees across disciplines.
But RehabWeek is more than just posters and presentations. It’s also about meeting new people, exchanging ideas, and building connections across borders and disciplines. Our team took full advantage of this, networking with researchers from MIT, various European universities, industry players, and many others. Who knows what exciting collaborations may come from this!
All in all, it was a fantastic week of science, sharing, and sunshine. A huge thank you to the organisers of RehabWeek and to everyone who stopped by to chat with our team. Until next time!
Journalist(s): Tomislav
Tharaka’s work looks to integrate wearable technologies and haptics into mindfulness practices and emotion regulation. We are very proud of Tharaka’s work over the year which has included the development of multiple different haptic interfaces as well as conducting a workshop with expert practitioners.
Congrats Tharaka!
Journalist(s): Jon
We’re excited to announce that Xinliang Guo, one of our PhD students, has been awarded a GloHub Doctoral Mobility Grant! 🎉
Quoting his supervisor, Prof. Ying Tan,
Thrilled to share some fantastic news!
My student, Xinliang Guo, has been awarded a GloHub Doctoral Mobility Grant and will spend three months at Lund University, Sweden from February 16 to May 15, 2026! ❄️🇸🇪
This is an amazing opportunity for Xinliang to grow his research through international collaboration—and I hope he enjoys the real Scandinavian winter while he’s at it! 🌨️☃️
Wishing him all the best on this exciting journey!
This grant provides a valuable opportunity to expand research horizons, build global partnerships, and gain new perspectives through international collaboration.
Congratulations, Xinliang! We look forward to hearing about your experience in Sweden and the great work to come.
#GloHub #DoctoralMobility #InternationalResearch #PhDLife #LundUniversity #GlobalCollaboration #ResearchAbroad #PhDOpportunities #WinterInSweden
Journalist(s): Ying
We’re excited to share that Loh Jia Quan (JQ) has successfully passed his PhD confirmation seminar!
Quoting his supervisor Vincent,
A bit less than a year after joining us, JQ successfully pass his confirmation today! JQ’s PhD is interested in developing methods to improve upper-limb rehabilitation post-stroke. Today he presented his progress to date which led to a conference paper to be presented in ICORR in May. He also presented his plan to extend this work to learn physical interaction between patients and physiotherapists.
JQ’s work sits at the intersection of rehabilitation robotics, human-robot interaction, and physical therapy, aiming to create technologies that meaningfully enhance post-stroke recovery. We’re proud of the solid foundation he’s built already and look forward to seeing his contributions unfold.
Congratulations, JQ, on this important milestone!
Journalist(s): Vincent
#PhDConfirmation #RehabilitationRobotics #HumanRobotInteraction #ICORR2025 #PostStrokeRecovery #PhysicalHumanRobotInteraction #ResearchMilestone #RoboticsForHealth
We’re delighted to celebrate Chongzhi Wang, who recently gave her PhD completion seminar on April 2nd—and what a fantastic session it was!
As part of her joint PhD with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, she spent her final year with us—and we’ve all benefited from her quiet brilliance and generous spirit (not to mention brushing up on a bit of matrix math just by chatting with her!).
Her talk, “Matrix-weighted Networks in Consensus and Synchronization”, was clear, composed, and packed with insight. I really enjoyed it. Chongzhi was calm and confident throughout, handling questions with ease—including some excellent ones from Airlie Chapman that led to great discussion.
Her SJTU supervisors and colleagues tuned in online to support her, though they didn’t get a chance to ask questions this time around. But no worries—Chongzhi has another defense seminar at SJTU later this year, and we’re sure she’ll impress them just as much as she did us.
Congrats again, Chongzhi—it’s been a joy having you with us! We wish you all the best in the final stages of your PhD journey.
Journalist(s): Ying
#PhDCompletion #ConsensusAndSynchronization #MatrixWeightedNetworks #RoboticsResearch #HumanRobotInteraction #PhDLife #WomenInSTEM #JointPhD #ResearchJourney
Following an exciting week at HRI 2025, we were thrilled to host fellow researchers and participants for a lab tour at our facilities!
Visitors had the chance to meet our robots up close, explore our current Human-Robot Interaction research projects, and chat with our team about the work we’re doing across areas like shared autonomy, assistive robotics, teleoperation, and sustainable interaction design.
It was a fantastic opportunity to exchange ideas, spark new collaborations, and give a behind-the-scenes look at the systems and prototypes we’ve been developing.
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us—it was truly energizing to connect in person and share our passion for HRI!
Looking forward to more exciting collaborations and conversations in the future.
#HRI2025 #LabTour #HumanRobotInteraction #RoboticsResearch #AssistiveRobots #SharedAutonomy #Teleoperation #SocialRobotics #RobotsForGood #ResearchCommunity #OpenLab
Journalist(s): Farshad
We’re proud to announce that Murphy, representing our lab, received the Sustainability Recognition Award at the HRI 2025 Student Design Challenge! 🎉
This year’s challenge centered around the theme “Robots for a Sustainable World,” and Murphy’s project—Neighbor Koala—stood out for its creativity and impact.
Neighbor Koala is a community service robot designed to strengthen social connections and promote sustainable living by:
🌿 Facilitating item exchanges among neighbors to reduce waste
📸 Capturing and sharing community moments to build shared memories
🎁 Leveraging the sociological concept of “gifting” to foster emotional bonds and encourage meaningful interactions
The project was a collaboration between students from The University of Melbourne, RMIT, UNSW, and Monash University—a fantastic example of cross-institutional teamwork in designing socially meaningful robotic solutions.
Congratulations to Murphy and the team for their inspiring work toward a more connected and sustainable world!
#HRI2025 #StudentDesignChallenge #RobotsForSustainability #NeighborKoala #HumanRobotInteraction #CommunityRobotics #GiftingEconomy
Journalist(s): Murphy and Farshad
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