About

Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi — Soft Kinetics Group

Current Positions

  • Group Leader (Assoc. Prof.) — Soft Kinetics Group, Engineering Sciences Department, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) (founded 2022)
  • Affiliated Group Leader — ETH Center for Learning Systems, ETH Zurich
  • Affiliated Faculty — Institute for NeuroInformatics (INI), University of Zurich
  • Honorary Associate Professor — Macquarie University Sydney (since 2022)

Previous Positions

  • Independent Max Planck Research Group Leader — MPI for Intelligent Systems (through 2023)
  • Lecturer / Assistant Professor — University of Technology Sydney (2016)

Education & Training

  • PhD — University of California, Berkeley (supervised by Prof. Robert Full, CiBER Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research)
  • Postdoctoral Researcher — University of Cambridge, Queens' College
  • Postdoctoral Researcher — Harvard University MicroRobotics Lab (with Prof. Robert Wood)

Research Focus

The Soft Kinetics Group develops bio-inspired robotic systems that use soft materials, embedded sensing, active structures, and control for interaction with contact-rich environments. Rather than treating the body as passive hardware, the group investigates how bodies contribute to intelligence — studying compliant morphology and distributed sensing principles and translating them into robotic systems that combine dynamical systems theory, control, and mechanical metamaterials.

Funding

  • SNSF Swiss National Science Foundation — 2 active projects
  • Cyber Valley Cyber Valley Research Fund
  • Max Planck Max Planck Society

Academic Leadership & Service

  • Panel moderator — "Soft Robotics & AI" (featuring Profs. Oliver Brock, Koh Hosoda, and others)
  • Chair — Soft Robotics Symposium at PPS38 (with Profs. Rob Shepherd, Yong Lae Park, Caecilia Laschi)
  • Session chair — IEEE RoboSoft, Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), AMAM, IEEE ICRA

Contact

Email: ardian.jusufi@uzh.ch
Phone: +41 58 765 3947
Address: Empa, Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland

Empa Profile · Soft Kinetics Group

Open positions available — prospective team members should contact the PI directly.