Edward Johns

Dr. Edward Johns is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London and Director of the Robot Learning Lab. He specializes in robot learning, focusing on enabling robots to learn tasks through imitation and language-based reasoning. His expertise spans robotics, machine learning, and computer vision, with a particular emphasis on manipulation tasks requiring physical interaction with objects.

He holds a BA and MEng from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Imperial College London. Prior to his current role, he was a postdoc at UCL, a founding member of the Dyson Robotics Lab, and led the robot manipulation team there. He also served as Head of Robot Learning at Dyson (part-time, 2021–2022).

His research has produced state-of-the-art capabilities such as one-shot imitation learning and language-driven task execution. Key areas of interest include sim-to-real transfer, self-supervised learning, and adaptive robotic systems. His work bridges foundational AI research with practical robotics applications, emphasizing real-world deployment and human-robot collaboration.

Dr. Johns has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers, with over 4,000 citations, and has received prestigious awards including the UK-RAS Early Career Award (2023) and the Best Conference Paper Award at ICRA (2024). He is also actively involved in industry through advisory roles for robotics and AI startups.

His teaching includes graduate courses on reinforcement learning and robot learning, and he collaborates extensively with labs such as the Robotics Forum and the Artificial Intelligence Network at Imperial College.