Francesco Rea

Francesco Rea graduated in B.SC. Information Engineering at the Universita di Bergamo in 2004 and specialized in Computer Engineering at the Universita di Bergamo in 2007. He got a M.Sc. degree in Robotics and Automation at the University of Salford, Greater Manchester University UK in 2008 with distinction final mark and a Ph.D degree in Robotics at the University of Genoa in 2012 contributing to different EU project (POETICON, eMorph) . He joined the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in 2013pro as fellow to support research on the perception and cognitive modeling and human-robot interaction in the EU project DARWIN. He was involved on a research program of study and dynamic simulation of human body under loads as Post Doctoral fellow at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in collaboration with US Department of Defense (Natick, USA). He spent research periods at the Applied Cognitive Neuroscience laboratory of University of Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada) and at the Emergent Robotics Lab. of the Osaka University. Since 2016 he is scientific responsible of the robotics development for Cognitive Architecture and Interaction at the RBCS Department at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Genoa). Since 2017, he teaches courses on Cognitive Robotics for Human Robot Interaction to University of Genoa students. In 2017, He is elected as team-leader for RBCS development of Pilot project on Embodied “Social” Intelligence for human-robot interaction for ROBOCOM++ (rethinking robotics for the robot companion of the future) international research project under FLAG-ERA second joint transnational call. In 2017, he won Canada-Italy Innovation Award with the title "Computational Neuroscience models for auditory aware robots" aiming at providing humanoid robots with auditory awareness in collaboration with the University of Lethbridge. His main areas of interest are modeling and replication of human and humanoid perception and cognitive skills, human-robot interaction and dynamic simulation of multi-body systems. In 2018, he was appointed as Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Lethbridge and won Mitacs Globalink Research award as participating professor for two visiting students in Italy. In 2022, he received the Italian national scientific qualification as RTD-B in Computer Science and Eletronics communication. He is under contract as professor for course in the department of informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering at the University of Genova (Italy). In 2020, he received grant as principal investigator and leader of a team at the IIT for two H2020 projects: VOJEXT (Value Of Joint EXperimentation in digital Technologies for manufacturing and construction) and APRIL (multipurpose robotics for mAniPulation of defoRmable materIaLs in manufacturing processes). In 2021, he won the Human Brain Project (HBP) SGA-3 grant as consortium coordinator of PROMEN-AID (PROactive MEmory iN AI for Development) project. The project aims to improve memory-based cognitive architectures that support human-robot collaboration in complex and realistic industrial environments.  In 2021, he won for the second time the Canada-Italy Innovation Award with a project tile "Sound-Aware robots for the mitigation of COVID-19 impacts" aiming at providing assistive robots with auditory awareness that enable robots to assist COVID-19 patients at hospitals in collaboration with the University of Lethbridge. Since 2022, Francesco Rea is senior team leader at the Cognitive Architecture for Interactive Technology (CONTACT), promoting top-level research in the field of cognitive Robotics and Human Robot Interaction.