Georges Giralt PhD Award for Cosimo Della Santina
Cosimo Della Santina received the prestigious Georges Giralt PhD Award for the best doctoral thesis in robotics in Europe, while institute doctoral candidate Marco de Stefano was another of a total of four finalists.
Cosimo Della Santina's doctoral thesis was written in the Soft Robotics Design and Control Laboratories of Antonio Bicchi in Pisa and is entitled: "Natural Principles for the Design and Control of Soft Robots". He spent many months at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics for his PhD and has a post-doctoral position in the working group of Alin Albu-Schäffer as part of the ERC grant on M-Runner since December 2019.
The Georges Giralt PhD Award is a European dissertation prize awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of robotics. It is awarded annually at the European Robotics Forum by the Brussels-based non-profit organization euRobotics AISBL. The winner's dissertation is published in the book series Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics.
The awarding institution, euRobotics AISBL, represents both the academic and industrial sectors of European robotics with around 280 member organizations. In addition, euRobotics AISBL acts as the official interface between the European Commission and the academic and industrial robotics community in Europe.
The Georges Giralt PhD Award is open to all doctoral candidates whose dissertation in the field of robotics was successfully defended at a European university in the year of the call.
This is already the fifth time in a row that employees of the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics receive this international award. The RM award winners of the past years were
- 2019: Teodor Tomić
- 2018: Daniel Leidner
- 2017: Johannes Englsberger
- 2016: Alexander Dietrich
Another reason for the institute to be happy was the 3rd place of the euRobotics Technology Transfer Award, which RM employee Maximilian Maier received for the successful technology transfer within the start-up Kinfinity, which he co-founded. Maxime Chalon, who is currently working at the institute as systems engineer for the MMX project, is also involved in Kinfinity.