Serena Ivaldi receives the Suzanne Zivi foundation prize.
Each year, the Académie de Stanislas awards one to three prizes under the Suzanne Zivi Foundation. These prizes are intended to reward young lecturers from the University of Lorraine or research fellows from the EPST working in a laboratory of the University or associated to it. This year, Serena Ivaldi is the winner of this prize. Discover the portrait of this researcher with an international background.
Her background :
Serena did her thesis at the Italian Institute of Technology in the team that designed the humanoid robot iCub, result of a collaboration between Italy and several countries including France in the field of robotics technologies. During her thesis, she developed the algorithm for estimating the body-complete dynamics of the robot, which is still in use today and has since been deployed on all iCub-type platforms.
She then pursued her studies with a post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics in Paris, in the team of Professor Olivier Sigaud, then at the University of Darmstadt in Germany, in the team of Professor Jan Peters. During her post-doctoral research, she was responsible for three iCub humanoid robots, which allowed her to conduct cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction.
In November 2014, she joined Inria and Loria as a research fellow. When she arrived, Loria did not yet have a team dedicated to robotics. She then contributed to the creation of the LARSEN team, a team entirely dedicated to robotics and artificial intelligence. Since its creation, she has been in charge of activities related to humanoid robotics and human-robot interaction.
Her work :
Serena has obtained several European and national projects to fund his research, which has enabled her to supervise theses and obtain numerous results in robotics and AI. For example, around the prediction of human activity, the optimization of the control of redundant robots and teleoperation. The Larsen team was the first to realize full body teleoperation with the iCub robot.
Her collaborations :
Her involvement in robotics research and development in Lorraine is reflected in numerous collaborations with industry and the Nancy University Hospital. She collaborates with the company ISOTOP for the robotization of the process of asbestos removal from roofs, a project funded by the Grand Est Region. She is in charge of cobots activities in the C-Shift project (Lorraine University of Excellence) around the industry of the future, which involves local companies (Eclatec, Thyssenkrupp) and the INRS center of Villers-lès-Nancy. Serena is collaborating with INRS, CNRS, the Virtual Hospital of Lorraine and the Nancy CHRU to equip resuscitation staff with exoskeletons in order to reduce their physical efforts, an action started in March 2020 in the Exoturn project at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis to help the CHRU.
Her mediation actions :
In addition to her research work, Serena is fully involved in mediation actions towards the general public. In 2020, she animated a live show from her laboratory for the Fête de la Science and recently she participated in the presentation of the Exoturn project in a live show animated by the Cité des Sciences.
