Roland Siegwart

Roland Siegwart (1959) is full Professor of Autonomous Systems at ETH Zurich since July 2006 and Founding Co-Director of the Wyss Zurich. From January 2010 to December 2014, he took office as Vice President Research and Corporate Relations in the ETH Executive Board. He is member of the board of directors of various companies, including Komax and NZZ.

He received his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering in 1983 and his Doctoral Degree in 1989 from ETH Zurich. He brought up a spin-off company, spent ten years as professor at EPFL Lausanne (1996 – 2006) and held visiting positions at Stanford University and NASA Ames.

He is and was the coordinator of multiple European projects and co-founder of half a dozen spin-off companies. He is IEEE Fellow, recipient of the IEEE RAS Inaba Technical Award and officer of the International Federation of Robotics Research (IFRR). He is in the editorial board of multiple journals in robotics and was a general chair of several conferences in robotics including IROS 2002, AIM 2007, FSR 2007 and ISRR 2009. 

Roland Siegwart's research interests are in the design and control of robot systems operating in complex and highly dynamical environments. His major goal is to find new ways to deal with uncertainties and enable the design of highly interactive and adaptive autonomous robots. Prominent application examples are personal and service robots, autonomous micro-aircrafts, walking and swimming robots and driver assistant systems. Furthermore, he is a strong promotor of innovation and entrepreneurship in Switzerland