Track Chair

Rui P. Rocha - Institute of Systems and Robotics, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Rui P. Rocha is a tenured Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and a senior researcher of the Institute of Systems and Robotics, both at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He earned his Ph.D. in ECE from the University of Porto in 2006. His research interests focus on developing multi-robot systems endowed with cooperative perception, decentralized coordination and resilient autonomy, targeting applications in service and assistive robotics, disaster response, environmental monitoring, industry, and logistics, for the benefit of humanity and sustainability. He has been involved in several EU funded R&D projects developed in consortium and national funded R&D projects, and has served as Principal Investigator in some of them involving swarm robotics for aquatic resources monitoring, urban search and rescue robotics, multi-robot building patrolling, and socially assistive robotics. He has co-authored ca. 100 scientific publications indexed in Scopus. He maintains an active editorial role in top-tier robotics journals, conferences, and thematic tracks on Intelligent Robotics, serving as reviewer, editor, and organizer. His teaching portfolio spans a wide range of subjects in ECE, including autonomous and cognitive robotics, industrial automation, algorithms and data structures, software and systems engineering, electronics, and digital systems and microprocessors. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Member of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Multi-Robot Systems. He co-founded the SAC IRMAS track and has served as chair or co-chair for all 12 editions.