Aude Billard

Expertise RoboticsMachine LearningArtificial IntelligenceHuman-Robot InteractionMechatronicsDynamical Systems ControlComputational Neuroscience Aude Billard is full professor and head of the LASA laboratory at the School of Engineering at the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and the Director of the Swiss Innovation Booster on Robotics. Dr. Billard acts as the President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), after serving in several roles in the administrative and executive committees of IEEE RAS. Aude Billard holds a B.Sc and M.Sc. in Physics from EPFL and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. A. B. is an IEEE Fellow and the recipient of numerous recognitions, among which 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 Distinguished Award, and the IEEE-RAS Best Reviewer Award. Dr. Billard was a plenary speaker at major robotics, AI and Control conferences (ICRA, AAAI, CoRL, HRI, CASE, ICDL, ECML, L4DC, IFAC Symposium, ROMAN, Humanoids and many others) and acted on various positions on the organization committee of numerous International Conferences in Robotics. Her research spans the fields of machine learning and robotics with a particular emphasis on fast and reactive control and on safe human-robot interaction. This research received numerous best conference paper awards, as well as the prestigious King-Sun Fu Memorial Award for the best IEEE Transaction in Robotics paper, and is regularly featured in premier venues (BBC, IEEE Spectrum, Wired).Dr. Billard was a plenary speaker at major robotics, AI and Control conferences (ICRA, AAAI, CoRL, HRI, CASE, ICDL, ECML, L4DC, IFAC Symposium, ROMAN, Humanoids and many others) and acted on various positions on the organization committee of numerous International Conferences in Robotics. Her research on human-robot interaction and robot learning from human demonstration is featured regularly in premier venues (BBC, IEEE Spectrum, Wired) and received numerous best paper awards, as well as the prestigious King-Sun Fu Memorial Award for the best  IEEE Transaction in Robotics paper.Curriculum vitae KEY METRICS Publications: 189+ (45 in last 5 years) h-index: Google Scholar 86 | Scopus 64 i10-index: 291PROFESSIONAL SERVICE (SELECTED)President, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2024–2025)Program Director, ELLIS Robot Learning Program (2020–Present)Director, Robot Learning Foundation (2022–Present)Vice-President Publications, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2020–2022)INSTITUTIONAL LEADERSHIPAssociate Dean for Education, EPFL School of Engineering (2024–2025)President, EPFL Teachers’ Council (2013–2017)President, EPFL Assembly (2006-2007)INDUSTRIAL & TECHNOLOGY TRANSFERDirector, Innosuisse National Thematic Network InnoBooster Robotics (2022–2025)Founder & Associate, AICA TechnologiesFounder & Associate, POMELO TechnologiesFounder & Associate, DIDEL SAAwards & Honors Honors & Personal AwardsWiRES RecipientIEEE RAS Distinguished Service AwardIEEE FellowERC Advanced GrantExcellent Women Academics, AcademiaNetElected Member, Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW).Best reviewer award, IEEE Robotics and Automation SocietySwiss National Science Foundation Career AwardOutstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation, Swiss Junior Chamber of CommerceInnovative Teaching Grant, Intel Corporation, USAOther Honors & AwardsPlenary Speaker :2024 IEEE Int. Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob, 1-4 Sept, Heidelberg 20242024 IEEE Int. Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, CASE, Bari, Aug 28- Sept 12023 3rd International Conference on Embodied Intelligence, March 22-24 2023, Online2022 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), Aukland, New Zealand, Dec. 14-182022 IEEE/ASME Intern. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), Sapporo, Japan, July 11-152021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, Virtual, 27-31 December 20212021 Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference (L4DC), Zurich, June 7-9, 20212020 17 International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots, Japan, June 22-26, 20202020 AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, New York, February 10, 20202020 Conference on Machine Learning, ICML, Long Beach, USA2019 11th IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems, Vienna, Austria2019 12th Progress in Motor Control Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands2019 10th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, Wuhan, China2019 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Christchurch, NZ2017 IEEE International Conference on Humanoids, Seoul, Korea2016 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany2015 IEEE Symposium on Human-Robot Interactive Communication, Nashville, USABest Paper Awards:Best Student Paper Award, Robotics Science and Systems, (RSS)Finalist Best Overall Conference Paper Award, Robotics Science and Systems, (RSS)King-Sun Fu Best Transactions Paper Award, IEEE & Robotics and Automation SocietyBest Cognitive Robotics Paper Award, Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)JTSC Novel Technology Best Paper Award, IEEE Int. Conf. Intellig. & Robotics Syst. (IROS)Best Paper Award, IEEE Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction (ROMAN)Best Paper Award, Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUATT)Finalist for Best Paper Award, Neural Information Processing SymposiumFinalist for Best Paper Award, IEEE Int. Conf. on Humanoid Robots Education PhD | Artificial Intelligence 1998 – 1998 University of Edinburgh MSc | Knowledge-Based Systems 1996 – 1996 University of Edinburgh BSc & MSc | Physics 1995 – 1995 EPFL Professionals experiences Full Professor 2013–2013 EPFLAssociated Professor with Tenure 2006–2012 EPFLAssistant Professor 2002–2006 EPFLAssistant Professor 2000–2002 University of Southern California Teaching & PhD PhD Students Hanli Zhang, Maximilian Schmitz, Luyin Hu, Baiyu Peng, Erfan Etesami, Sthithpragya Gupta, Kuanqi Cai Past EPFL PhD Students Eric Sauser, Sylvain Calinon, Micha Hersch, Florent Günter, Biljana Petreska von Ritter-Zahony, Basilio Noris, Elena Gribovskaya, Seyed Mohammad Khansari Zadeh, Seungsu Kim, Ashwini Shukla, Klas Jonas Alfred Kronander, Luka Lukic, Miao Li, Ravin Luis De Souza, Guillaume Pierre Luc De Chambrier, Nicolas Sommer, Hang Yin, Lucia Ureche, Seyed Sina Mirrazavi Salehian, Mahdi Khoramshahi, Nadia Barbara Figueroa Fernandez, Iason Batzianoulis, Walid Amanhoud, Fumiaki Iwane, Jacob Hernandez Sanchez, Michael Bosongo Bombile, Kunpeng Yao, Farshad Khadivar, Nuno Ricardo Ferreira Duarte, Mikhail Koptev, David Julian Gonon, Lukas Huber, Bernardo Fichera, Khurana Harshit, Yang Liu Courses Kinematics grounded motion planning for robots ENG-654 Students learn forward/inverse kinematics, singularity analysis, and constraint-aware path planning for modern robotic manipulators, implementing kinematic models and planners in a final project. Machine learning I MICRO-455 Real-world engineering applications must cope with a large dataset of dynamic variables, which cannot be well approximated by classical or deterministic models. This course gives an overview of methods from Machine Learning for the analysis of non-linear, highly noisy and multi dimensional data Machine learning programming MICRO-401 This is a practice-based course, where students program algorithms in machine learning and evaluate the performance of the algorithm thoroughly using real-world dataset. Robotics practicals MICRO-453 The goal of this lab series is to practice the various theoretical frameworks acquired in the courses on a variety of robots, ranging from industrial robots to autonomous mobile robots, to robotic devices, all the way to interactive robots. TEACHING (SELECTED COURSES) Learning and Adaptive Control for Robots (EPFL, 2022–Present)Applied Machine Learning (EPFL, 2004–Present)Advanced Machine Learning (EPFL, 2014–Present)Machine Learning Programming (EPFL, 2016–Present) Awards Innovative Teaching Grant Intel Corporation 1996 Swiss National Science Foundation Career Award Swiss National Science Foundation 2003 The Outstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation Swiss Junior Chamber of Commerce 2001 Best reviewer award IEEE Robotics and Automation Society 2003 Elected Member Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) 2013 Excellent Women Academics AcademiaNet 2015 ERC Advanced Grant European Research Council 2017 IEEE Fellow IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 2020 IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 2022 WiRES Recipient 2023