Reymond ClavelReymond CLAVEL obtained his degree in mechanical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 1973. After nine years of gathered experience in industrial plants at Hermes Precisa International (research and development), he was appointed professor at the EPFL, where he obtained his PhD degree in parallel robotics in 1991. He was then consecutively entrusted with the following positions: Head of the department, Director of the Section of micro engineering and, in 1993, Director of the Laboratory of robotics systems (LSRO). His present research topics are parallel robotics, high speed and high precision robotics, medical and surgical robotics applications, surgical instrumentation and precision mechanisms.
Reymond Clavels research successes in parallel and industrial robotics received worldwide special mentions.
Awards :
1989: Laureate of the JIRA AWARD (Japan Industrial Robot Association) for the DELTA parallel robot invented in 1985.
1996: Project winner of the Technologiestandort Schweiz competition and ABB Sonderpreis for the best robotics project.
1998: His laboratory is awarded the Grand Prix de lInnovation in Monaco for new robot technologies.
1999: Laureate of the Golden Robot Award for the DELTA Robot.
2003: Each of his three different submitted projects received the Swiss Technology Award.
2005: Project winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition with further the Sonderpreis 2005 from the Vontobel Foundation in the field of Inventing the future.
2006: Project winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition with Quantum leap into world of nano-EDM (a new high precision EDM machine based on the Delta kinematics).
2007: Two projects based on the LSROs researches are winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition: Cyberthosis for paraplegia rehabilitation (a collaboration with the company Swortec and the Fondation Suisse pour les Cyberthèses (FSC)) and the Microfactory realized in partnership with the CSEM .
Hritwick BanerjeeI'm currently working as a Ph.D. student in the Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices. My research interests span from the study of cancer cell deformations to the most recent advances in bio-assistive soft robotics, incorporating diverse fields such as mechanics of soft matter, deformable electronics and adaptive structures, bio-inspired design, smart materials, and flexible sensors. I am equally interested in the realm of sensors and architectures with the induction of hydrogel and polymer-based multifaceted material functions that conform to and create an intimate matching with soft and non-planar body surfaces thus offering intriguing opportunities in biology and medicine.
My long-term research interests lie at the intersection of Mechanics, Materials, Biology, and Medicine. Specifically, I am interested in understanding and design soft materials with unprecedented mechanical properties such as extremely tough and strong, ultra-sensitive to stimuli, programmable, biocompatible and bioactive to interface humans and machine and their intelligence. Also, my long arching research goal is to work in point-of-care (POC) diagnostics, low-cost medical device fabrication easily accessible to the common people from developing countries.
