ETH Zurich, Zurich
Switzerland
Research Areas
Biomedical Engineering, Biomedical Equipment, Control Theory, Prosthetics, Robot Programming, Robots
Biography
Robert Riener was born and raised in Munich, Germany. He studied Mechanical Engineering at TU München and the University of Maryland from 1988 to 1993. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree and Dr. degree from TU München in 1993 and 1997, respectively. In 1993, he also joined the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, which sparked his interest in neuro-prosthetics. From 1998 to 1999, he performed post-doctoral work at the Centro di Bioingegneria, Politecnico de Milano before returning to TU München to finish his Habilitation in Biomechatronics and acquiring a professorship at Zurich in 2003. As of 2010, he has served as Full Professor for Sensory-Motor Systems at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich. Riener is also actively involved with the Spinal Cord Injury Center at Balgrist University Hospital, where he is also Full Professor in Rehabilitation Engineering at the Medical Faculty, University of Zurich. Riener’s research interests include human motor synthesis, biomechanics, virtual reality, man-machine interactions, and rehabilitation robotics and prosthetics. For his work he has received several awards and honors, including the humanTech Innovation Prize, the Swiss Technology Award, and the euRobotics Technology Transfer Awards in 2011 and 2012.