Principal Investigator
Pakpong Chirarattananon will join the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto as an Associate Professor in the summer of 2025. He is currently an Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Pakpong received his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University in 2014 and a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
His research is primarily centered on biologically-inspired robotic systems, micro aerial vehicles, and hybrid locomotion. Pakpong has developed highly efficient revolving-wing drones, flapping-wing robots, and multimodal multirotors, with publications in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature, and Science Robotics. His approach involves using intelligent mechanisms to address the complexities of power, dynamics, and control as he seeks to enhance the capabilities of small robotic devices through a deeper understanding of the synergy between mechanical design, actuation, dynamics, control strategies, and environmental conditions. Pakpong serves on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), npj Robotics, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L). His contributions to the field have been recognized with numerous accolades, including the 2021 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award.
Xinyu Cai, MPhil, 2020 (PhD at Singapore University of Technology and Design).
Qingning He, undergraduate, 2020 (MSc at Imperial College).
Yi-Hsuan Hsiao, undergraduate and research assistant, 2021 (PhD at MIT EECS).
Huaiyuan Jia, PhD, 2023 (Huawei).
Supanat Kamtue, research assistant, 2016 (PhD at Durham University).
Zhiwei Li, PhD, 2019.
Dezhi Liang, MSc, 2018.
Bingguo Mu, PhD, 2020.
Mark L. F. Padilla, exchange research student, 2018 (De La Salle University, Philippines).
Muhammad Shahzain Riaz, undergraduate, 2017 (PhD at UCLA).
Jing Shu, undergraduate, 2019 (MPhil at Chinese University of Hong Kong).
Sompol Suntharasantic, research assistant, 2017 (HiveGround).
Heng Xie, PhD, 2022.
Size Yu, MPhil, 2024.
Shangkun Zhong, PhD, 2021 (Aviation Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Flight Control, AVIC Xi’an Automatic Flight Control Research Institute).
