Fares Abu-Dakka
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: PhD, Polytechnic University of Valencia
Research Areas: Robot learning; geometric control; learning from demonstration; physical interactions
Fares J. Abu-Dakka received a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Birzeit University, Palestine (2003), and advanced degrees (DEA and PhD) in robotics motion planning from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), Spain (2006, 2011), in addition to M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from UPV (2015). His postdoctoral journey began at the Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia, in 2012. From 2013 to 2016, he was a Visiting Professor at Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain, followed by a postdoctoral role at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) from 2016 to 2019. He was a Research Fellow at Aalto University (2019-2022) before joining the Technical University of Munich as a Senior Scientist in 2022, where he led the Robot Learning group at MIRMI. Currently, he is a Lecturer and Researcher at Mondragon Unibertsitatea, Spain. His research spans control theory, differential geometry, and machine learning, with a focus on improving robot manipulation performance and safety. He also serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) and IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO).
Professional Affiliation Activities
- Associate Editor: Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2024-present
- Associate Editor: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2024-present
- Guest Editor: IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2022, Special Issue on Variable Impedance Control and Learning in Complex Interaction Scenarios: Challenges and Opportunities
- Guest Editor: Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2018-2019, Special issue on Variable Impedance Robot Skills: Control & Learning
- Associate Editor: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022-2024
- Associate Editor: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020-2023