The 2012 SAC board
Laura Margheri - IEEE-RAS-SAC Chair 2012-2013
Biography & Contact
Laura received her Master Degree in Biomedical Engineering (with Honours) from the University of Pisa in July 2008. She is currently a PhD student in Biorobotics at The BioRobotics Institute (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy). Her research interests are in the fields of biorobotics, biomimetics, biology and neuroscience. Her main activities are focused on the biomechanical measurement, motion analysis, and modeling of biological organisms to identify key principles from biology and to properly transfer them into engineering concepts and new technological solutions. She has held visiting position as PhD student at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (Napoli, Italy), at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel), and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel). She is Student Member of the IEEE, of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, and of the Robotics and Automation Society as RAS Student AdCom Member and Chair of the RAS Student Activities Committee for 2012-13.
Laura Margheri IEEE RAS Profile
Patrick Wensing - IEEE-RAS-SAC Co-Chair 2012
Dear Fellow Students, It is a pleasure to introduce myself as one of the newly appointed co-chairs for the 2012 RAS SAC. My name is Patrick Wensing and I am a third year PhD student at Ohio State University in the United States. At OSU, I work in the area of legged locomotion, and more specifically, in the generation and control of dynamic movements. While I have been an active member of my local IEEE student branch since 2009, I look forward to the unique opportunity to serve this vibrant international organization. Specifically I will be helping Laura as editor of the SAC newsletter and webmaster for our SAC wiki. I will work to keep the newsletter useful and informative, and I eagerly await any feedback you might have on its content.
For those with a knack for the pen, we hope you’ll come alongside us to help write articles for the newsletter! Even if it’s just an article a year, we would love to have you on board. Any interested authors should e-mail Laura or me and we’ll get you set up!
Once again, I’m excited to serve our student community in this coming year, and I look forward to working with an enthusiastic group of volunteers. It was great to meet so many of you at ICRA, and I hope to hear from you soon!
Cheers!
Patrick Wensing IEEE RAS Profile
Douwe Dresscher - IEEE-RAS-SAC Co-Chair 2012
Dear colleagues, For any organization it is essential to have involved active and enthusiastic members. Therefore, it is important to have a committed group that puts time and effort in giving members the opportunity to be active, get involved, and become enthusiastic. It is exiting to play an important role within this group as co-chair of the SAC of RAS. I will try to do my best to get the most out of this opportunity, both for the IEEE-RAS student members and personally.
I am a PhD student at the Control Engineering group (to be converted into Robotics and Mechatronics, RAM) at the University of Twente, Netherlands. My research is on developments toward dike-inspection robots with a focus on energy-efficient legged locomotion. Besides my research, I am co-organizer and coordinator of the RAM-MakerSpace (http://makerspacetwente.wordpress.com/), Member of the DISC (Dutch Institute for Systems and Control) student board and involved in various activities within the Control Engineering group. For the next year, I’ll be responsible for organizing activities, student recruitment, the summer school and industry relations. I hope to meet, and collaborate with, many of you in the coming years.
Thank you all for giving me this opportunity.