Hi! I’m Juanma Gandarias,
I am an Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering and Automation Department and a researcher at the Robotics and Mechatronics group at the University of Malaga.My research interests include physical Human-Robot Interaction, human modeling, haptics, and soft robotics.
Here you can find preprints of my publications, overviews of past and ongoing research projects, teaching material, and my contact information.
Juan M. Gandarias is an Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering and Automation Department at the University of Malaga, Spain, where he conducts his research in the Robotics and Mechatronics Lab. He is the Principal Investigator of the STIFF-JAM and TYRELL projects and has participated as a senior researcher in several international projects. He has supervised one Ph.D. thesis, one M.Sc., and 8 B.Sc theses. He has been a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction group at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, led by Dr. Arash Ajoudani. He has participated as senior postdoc in the European project Ergo-Lean, a Starting Grant Project from the European Research Council (ERC). He also participated as a senior researcher in the SOPHIA project, framed within the Horizon 2020 initiative of the European Union. He collaborates as scientific advisor in the Real-Move start-up project, awarded with Proof-of-Concept funding from the ERC and winner of the SmartCup Liguria Award (industrial category). He has participated in European, Spanish and Italian projects as predoctoral and postdoctoral researcher. He has authored 40 publications in scientific journals and flagship conferences in the fields of robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. In 2024, he was a finalist for the best paper award in Human-Robot Interaction at the ICRA 2024 conference, and in mobile manipulation at the IROS 2022 conference. He is also the inventor of one international patent. He served as editor for two special issues of the Sensors journal. He has been a member of the program committee for the international conferences ROBOT 2022 and ROBOT 2023, an associate editor for the ICAR 2023 conference, and organized workshops at IEEE Humanoids 2020 and IROS 2022. He has reviewed over 60 articles for prestigious scientific journals and conferences such as IEEE RAM, Soft Robotics, RA-L, ICRA, IROS, ToH, or RCIM among others. Previously, he received his B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Málaga in 2015, 2017, and 2020, respectively. He obtained the Cum Laude and international mentions for his Ph.D. degree as well as the extraordinary award for the best doctoral dissertation in Mechatronics Engineering of his promotion. During his PhD, he spent four months as a Ph.D. visitor at the Soft Haptics & Robotics Lab, led by Prof. Helge Wurdemann in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University College London. He has taught approximately 300 hours for various Engineering degrees. He has also received over 150 hours of additional training beyond his official qualifications. He has participated in an Educational Innovation Project at the University of Málaga and attended a national conference on educational innovation. His main research interests include physical Human-Robot Interaction, compliant robots, and haptics.
Awards and honors
Workshops Organization
Committees
Ph.D. in Mechatronics Engineering, 2020
University of Malaga
M.S. in Mechatronics Engineering, 2017
University of Malaga
B.S. in Indsutrial Engineering. Robotics, Automation and Control., 2015
University of Malaga