About Me
Before starting my group, I was working within the Autonomous Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Liverpool with Prof. Andy Cooper as a senior Postdoctoral Research Associate, on the ERC Synergy Grant ADAM. I have enjoyed developing and deploying novel robot learning methods on our robotic platforms (primarily on the Franka Emika Panda, collaborating on projects using the KUKA KMR and YuMi) for advancing the excellent research being carried out in-house in the field of materials discovery.
Previously, I worked within the Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour and the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the UKRI RAI Hub NCNR. During my time at Edinburgh, I worked with Prof. Michael Mistry on physics-guided neural networks for learning dynamics models, specifically in the field of robotic manipulation.
Prior to this, I was a Marie-Sklodowska Curie early stage researcher within the Cognitive Robotics Lab, supervised by Prof. Angelo Cangelosi and obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester. My work focused on improving the iCub’s language acquisition through perception.
During my Ph.D., I have also carried out research secondments at the University of Edinburgh Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour and at the Humanoid Sensing and Perception Research Lab within the iCub facility at IIT.
Education
- Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK, 2020.
- M. Sc. in Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics (Distinction), University of Birmingham, UK, 2016.
- B. Eng. (hons.) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Malta, Malta, 2015.
Awards
Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow for my research vision on “Upskilling robotic scientists for long-term laboratory workflows”.
DAAD AINet Fellow for the Postdoc-NeT-AI in Cyber Physical Systems.
ICRA Outstanding Automation paper finalist, Philadelphia, 2022.
Grant awarded to attend the 3rd Summer School on Integrating Vision and Language: Vision and Language Integration in Cognitive Robotics, Athens, Greece, 2017.
Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions scholarship awarded to pursue doctoral training at the University of Plymouth (transferred to the University of Manchester), 2016.
ENDEAVOUR scholarship awarded to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of Birmingham, 2015.
Scholarship awarded for the biomedical engineering summer course at the University of Applied Sciences, Wilhelmshaven, Germany, 2013.
Best Newcomer Award at the IEEE Malta Student Branch Robot Wars competition, 2012.