Speakers
Prof. Agathe Koller
Head of Institute for Lab Automation and Mechatronics, OST – Ostschweizer Fachhochschule
Agathe Koller studied Microengineering at the EPF Lausanne (CH) and, within a one-year exchange program, Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg (USA). She got a Master’s degree in Genie Industriel from the Institute National Polytechnique in Grenoble (F) and earned a PhD in robotics from the ETH Zurich (CH). She then worked for five years in the development of robotics platforms at Tecan, an internationally active laboratory automation company in Männedorf. She then became a professor of robotics and automation at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, also named OST – Ostschweizer Fachhochschule.
Agathe Koller is head of the Institute for Lab Automation and Mechatronics (ILT) as well as the Medtech Lab Competence Center at OST. Her main research topics include collaborative robotics and automation in life sciences. The institute ILT is specialized in robotics, industrial automation, autonomous systems, life sciences and medical engineering.
Agathe Koller is the program director for the Master of Science in Engineering with its eleven profiles in engineering, construction and planning. She is also expert and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW).
Alexander Schaepfer
Alexander joined Swisscom Ventures in 2016 as partner and focuses on investments in the fields of robotics, enterprise software applications and education technology. Prior to Swisscom, Alexander was co-founder and partner at Paris-based Aster Capital.
Before becoming a VC, Alexander headed up Strategy, M&A, Sales and Marketing at Alstom’s €5bn Power Service sector and prior to that held several operational management positions with ABB in the Middle East. He also co-founded and chaired a robotics start-up at ETH Zürich.
He holds a BA from the University of Applied Sciences in St. Gallen and a Masters in Finance (M.Sc.) from London Business School.
Alexander is a board-member in Swiss companies Anybotics, Flyability, Yokoy and xFarm and has led venture investments in the US, Israel, and Europe.
Prof. Andrea Shenker-Wicki
Born in 1959 Andrea Schenker-Wicki holds a master degree in Food Engineering from ETH Zurich and a master degree in Business Administration from the University of Zurich. In 1990 she obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg in the field of Operations Research and Information Technology. She habilitated in 1996 at the University of St. Gallen with a thesis about the measurement of academic performance.
From 1990 to 1997 Andrea Schenker-Wicki worked at the National Emergency Operations Centre in Zurich, as a research associate and from 1993 on she also became its Head of the information office. For the subsequent four years, she led the section for higher education at the Federal Office of Education and Science (today: State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation).
From 2001 to 2015 she held a full professorship in Business Administration at the University of Zurich and acted as the Director of the Executive MBA as well as the CAS program “Essentials of management”. In addition, she was Vice President for Law and Economics at the University of Zurich between 2012 and 2014. On August 1, 2015, she became President of the University of Basel.
Andrea Schenker-Wicki has joined, among others, the Council of the Zürcher Fachhochschule (ZFH). Furthermore, she was part of the Austria Science Board (2010–2016) and the German Accreditation Council and presided over the Scientific Advisory Board of the Swiss Center of Accreditation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education (OAQ) from 2007 to 2012. From 2012 to 2015, she was a member of the Swiss Science and Innovation Council. The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (2013) and the Asian University for Women (2023) awarded her honorary doctorates.
Andrea Schenker-Wicki has been President of the University of Basel since 1 August 2015. Her third term of office runs until 31 July 2027.
Credits picture:
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Andrea Schenker-Wicki, President of the University of Basel. (Photo: Universität Basel, Lucia Hunziker)
Prof. Aude Billard
Head of LASA Lab at EPFL and Lead of Innovation Booster Robotics
Prof. Aude Billard is head of the LASA laboratory at the School of Engineering at the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).
A.B. holds a B.Sc and M.Sc. in Physics from EPFL (1995) and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence (1998) from the University of Edinburgh. A.B. was the recipient of the Intel Corporation Teaching award, the Swiss National Science Foundation career award, the Outstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation from the Swiss Chamber of Commerce, the IEEE-RAS Best Reviewer Award and IEEE-RAS Distinguished Service Award. A. B.’s research spans the fields of machine learning and robotics with a particular emphasis on learning from sparse data and performing fast and robust retrieval. This work finds application to robotics, human-robot / human-computer interaction and computational neuroscience. This research received best paper awards from IEEE T-RO, RSS, ICRA, IROS, Humanoids and ROMAN and was featured in premier venues (BBC, IEEE Spectrum, Wired).
Aude Billard leads the Swiss National Thematic Network Innovation Booster on Robotics, a half a million fund in support of industrial-academic partnerships, and is the current president-elect of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.
Prof. Dario Floreano
Head of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL
Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland.
Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly and Flyability) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub).
Dr. Diego Paez-Granados
Head of the SCAI Lab at ETH Zürich
Dr. Paez is the Head of the SCAI Lab at ETH Zürich and Swiss Paraplegic Research (SPF) in Switzerland. With a focus on personalized healthcare, his lab utilizes advanced machine learning techniques and wearable sensing to develop assistive decision-making systems that model disease onset and develop digital biomarkers.
Passionate about enhancing healthcare, Dr. Paez is dedicated to creating patient digital twins and leveraging them to develop preventive technologies that support healthcare workers and caregivers. His diverse research interests span human modeling in assistive robotics, human-robot interaction control, explainable models for machine learning in healthcare applications, and biosignal processing.
Prof. Edyta Augustynowicz
Professor of Digital Wood Fabrication and a co-lead of the group Digital Fabrication at the Department of Architecture, Wood and Civil Engineering at Bern University of Applied Sciences
Edyta Augustynowicz is a Professor of Digital Wood Fabrication and a co-lead of the group Digital Fabrication at the Department of Architecture, Wood and Civil Engineering at Bern University of Applied Sciences. She`s an architect and digital designer with diverse experience in the Swiss construction industry, architecture and academia. After receiving her MAS CAAD from ETH Zurich in 2010, she worked at DT at Herzog and de Meuron, ETH Zurich, ERNE AG Holzbau and FHNW. Her interests focus on digital design and robotic wood fabrication processes, as well as redefining the role of the architect in digitized construction.
Prof. Dr. med. Heide Elke Viehweger
Clinical Professor of Neuroorthopedics, Deputy Chief Physician of Orthopedics , Head of Neuroorthopedics, Head of Gait Laboratory
Heide Elke Viehweger is a senior orthopedic surgeon and holds the professorship in Neuroorthopaedics at the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) and Basel university, with expertise in the care for children with cerebral palsy. She has a long and distinguished career in clinical and research activities, having worked in Paris and Marseille, France before joining UKBB in 2020.
She is head of the department of neuro-orthopedics and the center of motion analysis and deputy chief physician of orthopaedics at UKBB. Her research activity as research group lead at the Department of Biomedical Engineering (DBE), mainly focuses on the biomechanical aspects of neurological and gait deviations, altered muscle and tendon properties and lever arm dysfunction.
She is interested in the multidisciplinary care and the implementation of evidence-based guidelines for children with neurologic and neuromuscular diseases. Furthermore, Prof. Viehweger is interested in the clinical application of robotics in rehabilitation and surgery, and she supports innovation and digital transformation in outcome evaluation and care, including patient-reported outcome measurement.
She has published many papers on topics such cerebral palsy, foot deformities, motion analysis and quality of life. Besides that, she is a member of the European Paediatric Orthopaedic Society and the European Society of Motion Analysis in Adults and Children (ESMAC), local organizer of ESMAC 2025 in Basel, Switzerland, and is the actual president of the French speaking society of Motion Analysis in Children and Adults (SOFAMEA). Due to her international status in both the clinical field and clinical research, Prof. Dr. Heide Elke Viehweger is a respected and visionary leader in her field.
François Vedovati
Senior Robotics Engineer at ClearSpace
Francois Vedovati is an accomplished expert in the space industry, with extensive experience in the development of high-precision mechatronic systems for planetary observation, including Earth, Mercury, and Mars missions. With a multidisciplinary background, Francois is now applying his technical expertise to address one of the most pressing challenges in space exploration: in-orbit debris removal at ClearSpace. His leadership, innovative approach and deep understanding of space technologies are driving advancements in sustainable space operations. Francois achieved his degree from ISAE (Institut Superieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace) and worked at Beyond Gravity Switzerland before joining ClearSpace.
Prof. Georg Rauter
Head of Bio-Inspired RObots for MEDicine-Lab (BIROMED-Lab)
Georg Rauter studied Mechatronics in Mechanical Engineering at TU Graz, Austria and Mathematical and Mechanical Modelling at the Engineering School MATMECA at Université de Bordeaux 1, France. He obtained his PhD in human-robot interaction in 2014 from ETH Zurich and continued postdoc positions at ETH Zurich, University of Southern California, and University of Zurich in the fields of rehabilitation robotics and statistical simulation. In 2016, he founded the Bio-Inspired RObots for MEDicine Laboratory (BIROMED-Lab) as an Assistant Professor for Medical Robotics and Mechatronics at the Department of Biomedical Engineering (DBE) of University of Basel. Since 2022, he holds a permanent position as the chair for surgical robotics. His research focuses on development of medical robots from idea to functional prototypes with the support of interdisciplinary research and industry teams.
Photo from Stefan Schneller, ETH Zurich
Prof. Jocelyne Bloch and Prof. Gregoire Courtine
Founders of the NeuroRestore Research Center
Jocelyne Bloch is neurosurgeon at the University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) where she leads the functional neurosurgery unit, while G. Courtine is a neuroscientist with a background in physics. Jocelyne and G. are Professor within the NeuroX institute of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), within the neurosurgical department of CHUV, and at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lausanne (UNIL). Together, they founded the center NeuroRestore, which develop bioengineering strategies involving neurosurgical interventions to restore neurological functions. In 2014, they. also co-founded ONWARD Medical (Euronext: ONWD) with the aim to translate the therapies developed at .NeuroRestore into clinical treatments. Jocelyne and G. are known worldwide for the conception of neuroprosthetic implants that restored walking in people with paralysis.
Dr. Jelena Godjevac
CEO at the Swiss Foundation for Innovation and Training Surgery
Jelena is the CEO of the at SWISS FOUNDATION FOR INNOVATION AND TRAINING IN SURGERY (SFITS), an innovative training center for all professionals who work in the operating theaters. She holds a PhD in robotics from EPFL. Her expertise are surgical robots and management of education.
Dr med. Josef Grab
Chief Physician of Insurance Medicine at SUVA
Josef Grab studied medicine at the University of Fribourg and Bern, where he also completed his doctorate. He pursued his residency to become a surgeon in various hospitals in Central Switzerland. After completing his residency, he began working at Suva as a specialist in the field of insurance medicine. A few years later, he was promoted to senior physician. Since 2020, he has been the CMO of Insurance Medicine at Suva. During his time at Suva, he completed a Master’s degree in advanced studies in insurance medicine and an Executive MBA HSG in Insurance and Financial Services.
Dr iur. Lukas Engelberger
Head of the Department of Health at Canton Basel and Director of Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Public Health.
Dr. iur. Lukas Engelberger has extensive legal and political experience. From 2005 to 2014, he was a corporate legal counsel at F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG in Basel. Before that, he worked as an attorney at Bär & Karrer in Zurich (2003–2005). He holds a Dr. iur. from Bern University (2003) and an LL.M. from University College London (2003). He was admitted to the bar in Basel-Stadt in 2001 after completing internships in a law firm and cantonal administration.
In politics, Engelberger has been a board member of the Swiss Conference of the Cantonal Ministers of Public Health (GDK) since 2014 and became its President in 2020. He also serves on the decision-making body for the Intercantonal Agreement on Highly Specialised Medicine (IVHSM) and has been a board member of Swissmedic (since 2017) and Cantosana AG (since 2019). Additionally, he joined the board of the foundation for the Institute for European Global Studies in 2020.
Previously, Engelberger served as President of the Conference of the Cantonal Ministers of Public Health for Northwestern Switzerland (2016–2017), President of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CVP) Basel-Stadt (2013–2014), and was a member of the Great Council (2004–2014).
Prof. Manuela Eugster
Group Head of ARTORG Centre at University of Bern
Manuela Eugster obtained an MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Robotics, Systems, and Control at ETH Zurich in 2016, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Bio-Inspired Robots for Medicine Lab, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Basel, in 2021. She is currently assistant professor at the ARTORG Centre, University of Bern, and at the Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital of Bern. She heads the Neuro Robotics Group, focusing on developing innovative instruments and technologies for neurosurgery based on robotics and micromechatronics.
Prof. Marco Hutter,
Director of Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich
Marco is a professor for robotic systems and director of the center for robotics at ETH Zurich. His research interests are in the development of novel machines and machines and their intelligence to operate in rough and challenging environments. He is part of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics and NCCR Digital Fabrication and PI in various international projects (e.g. EU NI, DigiForest) and challenges. Moreover, Marco is co-founder of several ETH Startups such as ANYbotics AG or Gravis Robotics AG, targeting the commercialization of legged robots and autonomous construction equipment.
Dr. Nicola Tomatis
CEO at BlueBotics SA and president of Swiss Robotics Association
Dr. Patrick Helmer
Prof. Robert Riener
Professor at Sensory-Motor Systems at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich
Robert Riener is full professor for Sensory-Motor Systems at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, and full professor of medicine at the University Hospital Balgrist, University of Zurich. He studied Mechanical Engineering at TU München, Germany, and University of Maryland, USA. He received a Dr.-Ing. degree in Engineering from the TU München in 1997. After postdoctoral work from 1998-1999 at the Centro di Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, he returned to TU München, where he completed his Habilitation in the field of Biomechatronics in 2003. In 2003 he became assistant professor at ETH Zurich and University of Zurich (“double-professorship”); since 2010 he has been full professor for Sensory-Motor Systems at ETH Zurich, and since 2016 also full professor at the medical faculty of the University of Zurich. His work focuses on the development of user-cooperative rehabilitation robots, exoskeletons, and virtual reality technologies. Riener is the initiator and organizer of the CYBATHLON, which was awarded with the European Excellence Award, the Yahoo Sports Technology Award and with two categories of the REIMAGINE Education Award. Since 2022 he is president of the ICORR, the International Consortium of Rehabilitation Robotics, which he co-founded in 2019. In 2018 Riener obtained the honorary doctoral degree from the University of Basel. Since 2023 he is member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences (SATW). Riener is a AAAS Leshner Leadership Fellow and a Thomas Mann Fellow.
Tom Kissling
Team Leader Lab Technologies & Robotics at F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd
Tom Kissling is a skilled professional known in the life science industry for his expertise in Lab Automation & Robotics. With a career spanning over 28 years @ F. Hoffmann – La Roche Ltd, Tom has established himself as a leader in the field of R&D Automation and Operations. He is recognized for his creative and innovative approaches resulting in numerous technology patents and commitment to excellence making an impact by consistently delivering outstanding results. Throughout his career, Tom has been involved in numerous successful projects and initiatives, demonstrating his ability to adapt and thrive in a fast-changing environment. He is a founding member of the SiLA standardization consortium and still active as a director of the board. In addition to his professional achievements, he is also passionate about the cultural heritage of Basel namely the Basler Fasnacht and supports a charity organization with its own aid projects in Nepal.
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