Antonio Bicchi is Senior Scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa and the Chair of Robotics at the University of Pisa. He graduated from the University of Bologna in 1988 and was a postdoc scholar at M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence lab. He teaches Robotics and Control Systems in the Department of Information Engineering (DII) of the University of Pisa. He leads the Robotics Group at the Research Center "E. Piaggio'' of the University of Pisa since 1990. He is the head of the SoftRobotics Lab for Human Cooperation and Rehabilitation at IIT in Genoa. Since 2013 he serves ad Adjunct Professor at the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering of Arizona State University.
From January, 2023, he is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Robotics Reserach (IJRR), the first scientific journal in Robotics. He has been the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2015-2019), which rapidly became the Robotics journal receiving most submissions. He has organized the first WorldHaptics Conference (2005), today the premier conference in the field. He is a co-founder and President emeritus of the Italian Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM)
His main research interests are in Robotics, Haptics, and Control Systems. He has published more than 500 papers on international journals, books, and refereed conferences. In 2025 he has been recognized by IEEE as a Pioneer in Robotics and Automation ”for fundamental contributions to artificial hands, haptics, and human-robot collaboration, and for their applications to robotics and prosthetics”. His research has been generously supported by the European Research Council with an Advanced Grant in 2012, a Synergy Grant in 2019, and four Proof-of-Concept grants. He originated and is today the scientific coordinator of the JOiiNT Lab, an advanced tech transfer lab with leading-edge industries in the Kilometro Rosso Innovation District in Bergamo, Italy.
To date, he has supervised more than 80 Ph.D.s and 26 postdocs. Among them, some 50 have started successful careers in industry, 20 are professors in academia and research institutions, and 10 have become entrepreneurs. Some of his early students are today fully accomplished, with roles ranging from Director of research institutions to Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions. In the recent generations, seven were finalists of the ``G. Giralt Award'' for Best Ph.D. thesis in Robotics. The award went to Manuel G. Catalano in 2013, to Cosimo Della Santina in 2019, and to Giuseppe B. Averta in 2020. Alessandro Altobelli and Federica Barontini won the EuroHaptics Best Ph.D. Thesis award in 2015 and 2023, respectively. The prestigious IEEE RAS Early Career Award was awarded to Arash Ajoudani in 2021 and to and Cosimo Della Santina in 2023.
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