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Administrative data

Aude Billard

aude.billard@epfl.ch +41 21 693 54 64 +41 21 693 54 64 http://lasa.epfl.ch/

Nationality: swiss & french

EPFL STI IMT LASA
ME A3 393 (Bâtiment ME)
Station 9
1015 Lausanne

EPFL STI IEM LASA
ME A3 393 (Bâtiment ME)
Station 9
1015 Lausanne

EPFL STI IEM LASA
ME A3 393 (Bâtiment ME)
Station 9
1015 Lausanne

EPFL STI IEM LASA
ME A3 393 (Bâtiment ME)
Station 9
1015 Lausanne

Expertise

Robotics
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Robot Interaction
Mechatronics
Dynamical Systems Control
Computational Neuroscience
Aude Billard is full professor and head of the LASA laboratory at the School of Engineering at the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and the Director of the Swiss Innovation Booster on Robotics. Dr. Billard acts as the President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), after serving in several roles in the administrative and executive committees of IEEE RAS. Aude Billard holds a B.Sc and M.Sc. in Physics from EPFL and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. A. B. is an IEEE Fellow and the recipient of numerous recognitions, among which the Intel Corporation Teaching award, the Swiss National Science Foundation career award, the Outstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation from the Swiss Chamber of Commerce, the IEEE RAS Distinguished Award, and the IEEE-RAS Best Reviewer Award. Dr. Billard was a plenary speaker at major robotics, AI and Control conferences (ICRA, AAAI, CoRL, HRI, CASE, ICDL, ECML, L4DC, IFAC Symposium, ROMAN, Humanoids and many others) and acted on various positions on the organization committee of numerous International Conferences in Robotics. Her research spans the fields of machine learning and robotics with a particular emphasis on fast and reactive control and on safe human-robot interaction. This research received numerous best conference paper awards, as well as the prestigious King-Sun Fu Memorial Award for the best IEEE Transaction in Robotics paper, and is regularly featured in premier venues (BBC, IEEE Spectrum, Wired).

Dr. Billard was a plenary speaker at major robotics, AI and Control conferences (ICRA, AAAI, CoRL, HRI, CASE, ICDL, ECML, L4DC, IFAC Symposium, ROMAN, Humanoids and many others) and acted on various positions on the organization committee of numerous International Conferences in Robotics. Her research on human-robot interaction and robot learning from human demonstration is featured regularly in premier venues (BBC, IEEE Spectrum, Wired) and received numerous best paper awards, as well as the prestigious King-Sun Fu Memorial Award for the best  IEEE Transaction in Robotics paper.

Curriculum vitae

KEY METRICS
  •  Publications: 189+ (45 in last 5 years)
  •  h-index: Google Scholar 86 | Scopus 64
  •  i10-index: 291

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE (SELECTED)
  • President, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2024–2025)
  • Program Director, ELLIS Robot Learning Program (2020–Present)
  • Director, Robot Learning Foundation (2022–Present)
  • Vice-President Publications, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2020–2022)

INSTITUTIONAL LEADERSHIP
  • Associate Dean for Education, EPFL School of Engineering (2024–2025)
  • President, EPFL Teachers’ Council (2013–2017)
  • President, EPFL Assembly (2006-2007)

INDUSTRIAL & TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
  • Director, Innosuisse National Thematic Network InnoBooster Robotics (2022–2025)
  • Founder & Associate, AICA Technologies
  • Founder & Associate, POMELO Technologies
  • Founder & Associate, DIDEL SA

Awards & Honors

Honors & Personal Awards

  • WiRES Recipient
  • IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award
  • IEEE Fellow
  • ERC Advanced Grant
  • Excellent Women Academics, AcademiaNet
  • Elected Member, Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW).
  • Best reviewer award, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
  • Swiss National Science Foundation Career Award
  • Outstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation, Swiss Junior Chamber of Commerce
  • Innovative Teaching Grant, Intel Corporation, USA

Other Honors & Awards

Plenary Speaker :
  • 2024 IEEE Int. Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob, 1-4 Sept, Heidelberg 2024
  • 2024 IEEE Int. Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, CASE, Bari, Aug 28- Sept 1
  • 2023 3rd International Conference on Embodied Intelligence, March 22-24 2023, Online
  • 2022 Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), Aukland, New Zealand, Dec. 14-18
  • 2022 IEEE/ASME Intern. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), Sapporo, Japan, July 11-15
  • 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, Virtual, 27-31 December 2021
  • 2021 Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference (L4DC), Zurich, June 7-9, 2021
  • 2020 17 International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots, Japan, June 22-26, 2020
  • 2020 AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, New York, February 10, 2020
  • 2020 Conference on Machine Learning, ICML, Long Beach, USA
  • 2019 11th IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems, Vienna, Austria
  • 2019 12th Progress in Motor Control Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2019 10th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, Wuhan, China
  • 2019 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, Christchurch, NZ
  • 2017 IEEE International Conference on Humanoids, Seoul, Korea
  • 2016 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany
  • 2015 IEEE Symposium on Human-Robot Interactive Communication, Nashville, USA

Best Paper Awards:
  • Best Student Paper Award, Robotics Science and Systems, (RSS)
  • Finalist Best Overall Conference Paper Award, Robotics Science and Systems, (RSS)
  • King-Sun Fu Best Transactions Paper Award, IEEE & Robotics and Automation Society
  • Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award, Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
  • JTSC Novel Technology Best Paper Award, IEEE Int. Conf. Intellig. & Robotics Syst. (IROS)
  • Best Paper Award, IEEE Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction (ROMAN)
  • Best Paper Award, Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUATT)
  • Finalist for Best Paper Award, Neural Information Processing Symposium
  • Finalist for Best Paper Award, IEEE Int. Conf. on Humanoid Robots

Education

PhD

| Artificial Intelligence

1998 – 1998 University of Edinburgh

MSc

| Knowledge-Based Systems

1996 – 1996 University of Edinburgh

BSc & MSc

| Physics

1995 – 1995 EPFL

Professionals experiences

Full Professor

2013–2013

EPFL

Associated Professor with Tenure

2006–2012

EPFL

Assistant Professor

2002–2006

EPFL

Assistant Professor

2000–2002

University of Southern California

Awards

Innovative Teaching Grant

Intel Corporation

1996

Swiss National Science Foundation Career Award

Swiss National Science Foundation

2003

The Outstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation

Swiss Junior Chamber of Commerce

2001

Best reviewer award

IEEE Robotics and Automation Society

2003

Elected Member

Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW)

2013

Excellent Women Academics

AcademiaNet

2015

ERC Advanced Grant

European Research Council

2017

IEEE Fellow

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

2020

IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

2022

WiRES Recipient

2023

Selected publications

Full List of Publications, see link

Aude Billard
Published in - Google Scholar in 2026

Teaching & PhD

PhD Students

Hanli Zhang, Maximilian Schmitz, Luyin Hu, Baiyu Peng, Erfan Etesami, Sthithpragya Gupta, Kuanqi Cai

Past EPFL PhD Students

Eric Sauser, Sylvain Calinon, Micha Hersch, Florent Günter, Biljana Petreska von Ritter-Zahony, Basilio Noris, Elena Gribovskaya, Seyed Mohammad Khansari Zadeh, Seungsu Kim, Ashwini Shukla, Klas Jonas Alfred Kronander, Luka Lukic, Miao Li, Ravin Luis De Souza, Guillaume Pierre Luc De Chambrier, Nicolas Sommer, Hang Yin, Lucia Ureche, Seyed Sina Mirrazavi Salehian, Mahdi Khoramshahi, Nadia Barbara Figueroa Fernandez, Iason Batzianoulis, Walid Amanhoud, Fumiaki Iwane, Jacob Hernandez Sanchez, Michael Bosongo Bombile, Kunpeng Yao, Farshad Khadivar, Nuno Ricardo Ferreira Duarte, Mikhail Koptev, David Julian Gonon, Lukas Huber, Bernardo Fichera, Khurana Harshit, Yang Liu

Courses

Machine learning programming

MICRO-401

This is a practice-based course, where students program algorithms in machine learning and evaluate the performance of the algorithm thoroughly using real-world dataset.

Robotics practicals

MICRO-453

The goal of this lab series is to practice the various theoretical frameworks acquired in the courses on a variety of robots, ranging from industrial robots to autonomous mobile robots, to robotic devices, all the way to interactive robots.

TEACHING (SELECTED COURSES)

  • Learning and Adaptive Control for Robots (EPFL, 2022–Present)
  • Applied Machine Learning (EPFL, 2004–Present)
  • Advanced Machine Learning (EPFL, 2014–Present)
  • Machine Learning Programming (EPFL, 2016–Present)