Agile Robotics with Deep Time informed Soft Active Materials

We develop bio-inspired and soft robotic systems leveraging the embodied intelligence of bodies internal dynamics and control to achieve robust, contact-rich movement through complex environments with active materials and embedded sensing. Our research combines experimental robotics, biomechanics, materials science, and dynamical systems to understand and engineer locomotion in swimming, climbing, landing, and high-energy transitions.

Rather than treating morphology as passive hardware, our work asks how bodies can compute, stabilize, absorb impact, exploit contact, and reduce control burden. This approach connects soft robotics, mechanical intelligence, and bio-inspired design to ultimately deliver deep time informed technology to surpass animal level agility.

Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where most of his formal training took place (Prof. Bob Full, CiBER center). He was a Queens’ College Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge. Subsequently, Ardian moved to Harvard University to join Prof. Robert Wood`s Harvard Microrobotics Lab at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically-Inspired Engineering on a postdoctoral fellowship. He was a lecturer at Sydney’s Robotics Institute before being appointed an independent Max Planck Research Group Leader [~Associate Prof.] at the MPI for Intelligent Systems at 2018, where he was employed through 2023.

Prof. Dr. Jusufi founded the Soft Kinetic Group at the Engineering Sciences Department at the Swiss Federal Labs for Materials Science and Technology while he was also an Affiliated Group Leader at the University of Zurich Institute for NeuroInformatics INI, where he has since joined full time. Ardian has also been an Hon. Associate Professor of Macquarie University Sydney since 2022. He has been awarded numerous grants by the Swiss NSF (two currently active) as well as a from the Cyber Valley Research Fund and the Max Planck Society.

Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi | Institute for NeuroInformatics University of Zurich 

Head of Soft Kinetic Group, Engineering Sciences Department | Swiss Federal Labs for Materials Science and Technology Empa

formerly Independent Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI for Intelligent Systems
and Associate Faculty Member at ETH Center for Learning Systems

Hon. Associate Professor | Macquarie University

Prof. Dr. Ardian Jusufi
Institute for NeuroInformatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Engineering Sci. Dept., Swiss Federal Labs Mat. Sci. Technology

Hon. Associate Professor, Macquarie University

➡️  Empa: https://www.empa.ch/web/juar/
➡️  Soft Kinetic: https://www.empa.ch/web/soft-kinetic/

Prof. Dr. Jusufi chaired a Soft Robotics Symposium at PPS38 that was attended by leading roboticists, and has chaired sessions in several conferences including IEEE RoboSoft, Robotics Science and Systems, AMAM, as well as IEEE ICRA workshop presentations.

We have open positions!  Please contact the PI: ardian.jusufi@uzh.ch