Matteo Iovino new project manager for WARA Robotics

Matteo Iovino took over as project manager for WARA Robotics in April. His ambition is to grow in the number of students actively using the network and he has already initiated activities to achieve that, such as a Mobile Manipulation Challenge ongoing with AstraZeneca – but more is to come!

Although this role is new for Matteo, the WASP community and WARA Robotics is familiar. Matteo holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Robotics, Perception, and Learning division of the school of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at KTH. He has an industrial PhD with ABB Research and was affiliated with WASP.

“As an ABB Research employee and WASP affiliated student, I was part of a small group of other industrial PhD students from ABB who defined the initial draft of the proposal for WARA Robotics. So now that I became the project manager for WARA Robotics it gives a nice feeling of loop closure. I can say that I saw the lab growing day after day since the proposal got accepted and I was one of the first students to use it as WARA Robotics.”

Matteo takes over after Jonas Larsson. His primarily tasks are to plan current and future activities, especially working towards scaling up the visibility and the number of students the network can support. The role also includes some practical hands-on work on the software. Another big responsibility is the maintenance of the lab as such so that it is compliant with the ABB regulations.

Increase network and visibility

Matteo has high ambitions with the WARA Robotics, some of them already initiated.

“We have a Mobile Manipulation Challenge ongoing with AstraZeneca and whose results will be exciting. Then, I plan on increasing our visibility by visiting the universities later this fall, so that the students and PIs will be able to have some face-to-face time to better understand our offer and to ask questions. At the same time, our software and hardware infrastructure will grow, to hopefully make our robots more accessible.”

When it comes to the ambition of growing the number of students actively involved in the network, he is inspired by the other WARAs and believes that they are good models for WARA Robotics.

“Our ambition is to increase our scale. I would love to see an active community built around WARA Robotics!”, says Matteo.

Thanks to Jonas and welcome to WARA Robotics, Matteo!