Luca Pietrantoni is a Full Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Bologna. He serves as Director of the Second Cycle Degree in Work, Organization, Personnel Psychology and Services and leads the Human Factors, Risk and Safety (HFRS) Lab. As the Rector's Delegate for the European Commission's Industry 5.0 Community of Practice, he bridges academic research with industrial innovation. His research explores human-technology synergies, safety science, and organizational dynamics. Key areas include: Human factors in transport systems AI and robotics in workplace safety Psychosocial dimensions of risk Human-machine interface optimization Organizational change management With 266 publications and 8,270+ citations, his work spans journals like Accident Prevention and Analysis and Risk Analysis . He secured €5M+ in competitive grants, including Horizon Europe projects: SESTOSENSO (€4.1M): Safe human-robot interaction H-WORK (€3.9M): Mental health interventions in workplaces XCYCLE (€5M): Cyclist safety technologies He teaches courses in Safety and Human Factors, Organizational Psychology, and Communication. His industry collaborations include human factors consulting for ENI, Frontex, and SBB Cargo Italia. Professional affiliations: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology (EAWOP) Italian Society of Ergonomics (SIE)
Rachid Alami is a Senior Scientist at CNRS and holds the Academic Chair of Cognitive and Interactive Robotics at the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute (ANITI) since 2019. He has been with CNRS since 1984, founding and leading the Robotics and InteractionS (RIS) team at LAAS for 10 years and serving as head of the LAAS Robotics Department for 8 years. His extensive career includes coordinating LAAS's Ambient Intelligence initiative and co-chairing the Interactive Robotics SIG at the French Research Group in Robotics for 6 years. Professor Alami's research focuses on cognitive robotics with emphasis on human-aware motion planning , combined task and motion planning , and multi-robot coordination . His work integrates symbolic reasoning with geometric constraints to create robots capable of operating safely and effectively in human-centered environments. His team has made significant contributions to social navigation algorithms, theory of mind for robots, and human-robot joint action frameworks. Analysis of his recent publications shows a strong trend toward integrating cognitive models with practical robotics applications, particularly in developing robots that can anticipate human actions and adapt their behavior accordingly. His work increasingly incorporates machine learning approaches to predict action feasibility while maintaining the formal guarantees of traditional planning systems. Senior Scientist at CNRS since 1984 Academic Chair at ANITI since 2019 Founder of Robotics and InteractionS (RIS) team Former head of LAAS Robotics Department Member of numerous thesis committees including INSA Lyon (2023) Professor Alami actively supervises PhD students and leads multiple research projects focusing on human-aware robotics. His lab collaborates extensively with international partners through European research initiatives, providing students with opportunities for international exchanges and collaborative research. The lab maintains strong connections with industry partners to ensure research relevance to real-world applications. His research group, the Robotics and InteractionS team at LAAS-CNRS, develops advanced algorithms for human-robot interaction, with particular expertise in navigation systems that respect social norms, task planners that anticipate human actions, and multi-robot coordination frameworks for collaborative tasks in shared environments.
Yiwei Lyu serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, joining the faculty in August 2025 after completing her Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research program bridges control theory, machine learning, and social science to develop safe, socially-compliant autonomous systems. Her educational background includes: Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University (2025) B.S. in Electronic Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (2019) Professor Lyu's work centers on risk-aware safe control for multi-agent systems, with emphasis on verifiable safety guarantees in human-robot interaction. She pioneers methods integrating control barrier functions with social preference modeling to enable robots that navigate complex environments while respecting human norms. Her research spans autonomous driving, multi-robot coordination, and human behavior prediction, consistently addressing the critical challenge of safety assurance in uncertain real-world scenarios. Analysis of her 15 most recent publications reveals a cohesive trajectory: evolving from foundational safe control (2021-2022) to sophisticated risk-aware frameworks (2023-2024) that incorporate social compliance and learning. Her work consistently targets high-impact applications in autonomous vehicles while maintaining theoretical rigor, with 7 papers receiving best paper awards or nominations since 2021. Her exceptional contributions have been recognized through: MIT EECS Rising Star (2024) - top global early-career honor IEEE/ACM Human-Robot Interaction Pioneer designation (2024) Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (2023) Multiple best paper awards at ICRA, IROS, and AAMAS venues Professor Lyu actively builds her research group, having welcomed her first PhD student in August 2025. Her competitive fellowship funding and rapid publication record indicate strong grant support potential. She serves on editorial boards (ICRA 2026 Associate Editor) and professional committees (Junior Co-chair, Multi-Robot Systems Technical Committee), demonstrating growing leadership in the robotics community. As a new faculty member, Professor Lyu combines fresh perspective with proven research excellence, offering students unique opportunities to shape the future of safe autonomy at the intersection of engineering and social sciences.
Stuart Jonathan Russell is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and Computational Precision Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He holds the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering and is also a Professor of Computational Precision Health at the University of California, San Francisco. Russell is the founder and leader of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) at UC Berkeley and serves as an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. His academic journey began with a B.A. in Physics from the University of Oxford, followed by a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Throughout his distinguished career, Russell has received numerous prestigious honors including the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (1995), IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (2022), Fellow of the Royal Society (2025), and Member of the National Academy of Engineering (2025). Russell's research spans multiple domains within artificial intelligence, with a recent focus on ensuring AI systems remain beneficial to humanity. His work includes significant contributions to machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, and inverse reinforcement learning. In recent years, his research has increasingly focused on AI safety, value alignment, and developing frameworks for human-compatible AI systems that maintain human control as AI capabilities advance. His publication record shows a clear trend toward addressing the long-term challenges of AI development, particularly the control problem and value alignment. The research spans theoretical foundations of AI, practical applications in robotics and decision making, and critical examinations of the societal implications of increasingly capable AI systems. Russell's work has evolved from foundational AI research to increasingly focus on the alignment problem and mechanisms for ensuring AI systems remain beneficial. Russell has received numerous scientific awards recognizing his contributions to the field: IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (1995) AAAI Fellow (1997) ACM Fellow (2003) AAAS Fellow (2011) Blaise Pascal Chair (2012) Reith Lectures (2021) Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) (2021) Fellow of the Royal Society (2025) Member of the National Academy of Engineering (2025) Russell has advised numerous doctoral students including Marie desJardins, Eric Xing, and Shlomo Zilberstein, and has mentored many postdoctoral researchers who have become leaders in the field. His research has been supported by various grants from organizations including the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and other funding bodies focused on advancing AI research with careful consideration of safety and societal impact. He has been particularly active in securing funding for research on human-compatible AI and value alignment. He founded and leads the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI), which brings together researchers from multiple disciplines to address the challenge of creating AI systems that reliably do what humans want them to do. The center collaborates with other research groups including the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) lab, the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public (KCESP), and the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences (ICBS), creating a rich interdisciplinary environment for addressing the challenges of AI safety and human compatibility.
Sonia Roberts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Wesleyan University, specializing in soft robotics and computational fabrication for human-environment interaction. Her educational background includes a PhD in Electrical and Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (2021), a postdoctoral fellowship at Northeastern University's Institute for Experiential Robotics (2023), and an undergraduate degree from Vassar College. Professor Roberts' research pioneers soft interactions between robots and deformable environments, focusing on robot locomotion through granular media (sand, snow, leaf litter) and knitting-based computational methods for creating soft sensors. Her work addresses critical challenges in enabling robots to safely navigate unstructured natural terrains and interact with delicate objects like fabrics, fruits, and humans through innovative soft robot skins and actuators.
Dr. Hunmin Kim serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Mercer University's School of Engineering, specializing in security and operational resilience of cyber-physical systems with applications in autonomous vehicles, UAVs, and smart grids. His educational background includes: PhD in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University (2018) BSE in Mechanical Engineering from Pusan National University (2012) Dr. Kim's research centers on developing attack/fault detection mechanisms, robust control frameworks, and path planning algorithms for cyber-physical systems operating in dynamic environments. His work addresses critical security vulnerabilities and coordination challenges in multi-agent systems, with emphasis on verifiable safety guarantees for autonomous operations. Analysis of his 2023-2025 publications reveals strong thematic convergence in resilient control under adversarial conditions, motion planning in complex environments, and assistive technology applications. His work consistently bridges theoretical control systems with practical implementations in autonomous vehicles and UAVs, featuring increasing integration of machine learning techniques for adaptive security. Professional recognition includes: Nomination for 2024 Clayton R. Paul Teaching Excellence Award Dr. Kim actively mentors undergraduate researchers through Mercer's Bear Day events and honors projects, guiding student teams in developing gesture-based drone controls, EMG signal processors, and assistive navigation devices for visually impaired individuals. He maintains extensive peer review commitments across 45+ journals/conferences annually including IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and Automatica. He contributes to the Collaborative Center for Computing at Mercer University and serves on the IEEE CSS Technology Conferences Editorial Review Board.
