Serena Ivaldi is a robotics researcher specializing in human-robot interaction and co-inventor of an exoskeleton that was used during the COVID-19 pandemic to turn over hospital patients in their intensive care beds and give caregivers relief from the heavy lifting.

Life and work

Born in Italy, Ivaldi's interest in robots began when she read the science fiction books of

Isaac Asimov yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...

. She earned her Master's degree in Automatic Control and

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

at the

University of Genoa The University of Genoa, known also with the acronym UniGe ( it, Università di Genova), is one of the largest universities in Italy. It is located in the city of Genoa and regional Metropolitan City of Genoa, on the Italian Riviera in the Liguri ...

, before completing her PhD at the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Science Lab of the

Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) (in English: Italian Institute of Technology) is a scientific research centre based in Genoa (Italy, EU). Its main goal is the advancement of science, in Italy and worldwide, through projects and discoveri ...

also in Genoa. In 2011, she left Italy for Paris to start her first post-doc at the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics at the Pierre and Marie-Curie University, which became the Sorbonne University in 2017. In May 2014, Ivaldi joined the IAS group at

Darmstadt University of Technology Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse a ...

in Germany for a second post-doc in the CoDyCo project. In November 2014, she became a research fellow at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation in

Nancy, France Nancy ; Lorraine Franconian: ''Nanzisch'' is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the northeastern Departments of France, French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. It was the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine, which was Lorraine and Barrois, an ...

. She then joined the LARSEN project in 2014 at 34 years of age, as a specialist in human-robot interaction. She took part in the European HEAP and H2020 "AnDy" projects. The ANDY project's goal was to improve the ability of ''collaborative robots'' (called CoBots) to work easily with people in environments both industrial and domestic to reduce the risk of injury to humans. At the time of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

in France, at the end of March 2020, she co-created with Nicla Settembre (Centre Hospitalier Régional et Universitaire de Nancy, INSERM and

Université de Lorraine The University of Lorraine (), often abbreviated in UL, is a grand établissement created on 1 January 2012, by the merger of Henri Poincaré University, Nancy 2 University, Paul Verlaine University – Metz and the National Polytechnic Institute ...

) the Exo Turn project, designed to validate the use of an

exoskeleton An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton (endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...

to turn over patients in their intensive care beds and give caregivers relief with this physical task that causes significant strain on the lumbar region of those who do the heavy lifting. During the pandemic, patients were turned over up to eight times a day to help with breathing. Leaevo exoskeletons were tested by 60 caregivers and then used with patients; other experiments were completed for other hospital applications. This was the first known use of exoskeletons in a hospital intensive care unit.

Honors and awards

Ivaldi received the Suzanne Zivi Award in 2020 for research excellence. Since 2021, she has been editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Social Robotics. She is a former associate editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2017–2021).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ivaldi, Serena Italian roboticists Women roboticists Robotic exoskeletons Robotic manipulation University of Genoa alumni COVID-19 Year of birth missing (living people) Living people