Yulia Sandamirskaya

Dr. Yulia Sandamirskaya is the Head of the Research Center 'Cognitive Computing in Life Sciences' at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), where she leads a research group focused on neuromorphic cognitive architectures for embedded AI systems. Her work integrates neural dynamics with robotic control, spanning real-time tasks such as sensing, planning, decision-making, learning, and motor control for assistive robots. She collaborates extensively with institutions like ETH Zurich and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, utilizing neuromorphic hardware such as dynamic vision sensors (DVS) and robotic platforms.

Her research encompasses neuromorphic architectures for obstacle avoidance, path integration, and sequence learning, as well as theoretical frameworks like Dynamic Neural Fields (DNFs) for cognitive modeling. She explores autonomous learning mechanisms, including unsupervised and reinforcement learning, and applies these to robotics in domains such as spatial language grounding and haptic exploration. Her group has published extensively on topics like event-based vision, resonator networks, and hardware implementations of neural algorithms.

Dr. Sandamirskaya has supervised multiple MSc theses on neuromorphic systems and robotic applications, with advisees working on projects like UAV obstacle avoidance, tactile object recognition, and neural-dynamic sequence generation. She actively contributes to workshops and conferences, including Science Robotics, CVPR, and IEEE conferences, and her work addresses challenges in low-power, high-speed robotic agents operating in real-world environments.