The research interests of Dr. Dimitris P. Tsakiris include biologically-inspired robotics, embodied intelligence, soft-material robotics, and control, in particular issues related to motion control, design, mechanics, sensing, smart materials, navigation, as well as computational modeling and simulation. He is exploring the application of this research to problems in medical robotics, in particular in robotic endoscopy, and in service robotics, in particular in underwater inspection and exploration, search-and-rescue, automated wheelchairs, smart environments, and planetary exploration. His work on novel soft-body octopus-like underwater robots has attracted significant technical and media interest, while one of these robots was deployed at the CreteAquarium in Crete, Greece, among live fish several times its size. Dr. Tsakiris holds a B.S. (Eng. Dipl.) degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Maryland at College Park, USA, while he has been a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA), France. He has published extensively in leading professional journals and conferences, and has attracted significant UK and EU research funding in support of his research activities. He has taught and supervised research students at the Institute of Computer Science – FORTH, the University of Crete, and Aberystwyth University.

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