Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies

Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies

Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies is one of the five Italian special statute public university institutions, holding a unique position within the Italian higher education system, and promoting excellence in research and education in applied sciences. Scientific research is carried out in six research institutes, covering a broad range of subjects in engineering, life, and social sciences.

The BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna is engaged in advanced education, research and innovation in the area of biorobotics. Internationally recognized fundamental and industrial research are carried out at the institute. The PhD in BioRobotics is among the largest doctoral schools worldwide in robotics and biomedical engineering, with 100+ PhD students enrolled. Doctoral research projects are carried out in very well equipped, state-of-the-art laboratories, in such fields as prosthetic, surgical, therapeutic and healthcare robotics, bioengineering, biomimetics, micro-and nano-technology, soft robotics.

https://www.santannapisa.it/en

https://www.santannapisa.it/en/institute/biorobotics/biorobotics-institute

Principal investigator

Antonio DeSimone is professor of Mechanics of Materials and Structures at The BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy). He received a master degree in Civil Engineering at University of Naples “Federico II”, and a PhD in Mechanics at the University of Minnesota. He has worked at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (Leipzig, Germany), and at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste, Italy). His research interests include the modeling of the motility of biological organisms and bio-inspired robots, and the mechanics of innovative materials (liquid crystal elastomers, active matter, …) and structures (deployable structures, soft robotics, …). On these topics, he has published more than 150 papers. He is a Euromech Fellow since 2015, and his awards include the Keith medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2007), an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (2013), a Humboldt Research Prize (2019) from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.