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Fares Abu-Dakka

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering (Affiliated), NYU Abu Dhabi; Associated Faculty with the Mechanical Engineering Department, Associated Faculty with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, NYU Tandon Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD, Polytechnic University of Valencia

Research Areas: Robot learning; geometric control; learning from demonstration; physical interactions

Fares Abu-Dakka

Fares J. Abu-Dakka is a roboticist and educator specializing in robot learning, manipulation, and control. His research focuses on enabling robots to acquire skills through learning from demonstration, reinforcement learning, and adaptive control, with applications in geometric control and physical human–robot interaction to enhance manipulation performance and safety. He has developed algorithms that enable robots to learn by observing human actions and interacting with their environment, advancing learning from demonstration and variable impedance control for safer and more adaptive robotic behavior. His work has been widely recognized, with extensive publications in leading robotics journals and conferences.

Abu-Dakka earned his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Birzeit University, Palestine in 2003, followed by a Ph.D. in Robotics and Motion Planning from Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Spain, in 2011. He also holds an M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from UPV (2015). His doctoral research focused on trajectory planning for industrial robots using genetic algorithms.

Over the years, he has held research and teaching positions across Europe and the Middle East. He has been a Visiting Professor at Carlos III University of Madrid (2013–2016), a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) (2016–2019), and a Research Fellow at Aalto University, Finland (2019–2022). Before joining NYUAD in 2024, he served as a Senior Scientist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) (2022-2023) and a Lecturer at Mondragon University (2023–2024).

In addition to his research and teaching, Fares J. Abu-Dakka is active in professional service and editorial roles within the robotics community. He serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) and the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), two of the field’s top peer-reviewed journals.

Courses Taught