Thrishantha Nanayakkara | Professional activities

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Professor in Robotics

Dyson School of Design Engineering - Faculty of Engineering

Orcid identifier0000-0002-1882-1232 (opens in a new tab)⁠

Professor in Robotics
Dyson School of Design Engineering - Faculty of Engineering

07902 396 681 (Work)

t.nanayakkara@imperial.ac.uk (opens in a new tab)

RCS 1M07, Dyson Building, South Kensington Campus, United Kingdom

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AWARD

SELECTED
Best application paper award at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022), Kyoto, Japan for the paper titled "Soft tissue characterisation using a novel medical percussion device with acoustic analysis and neural networks" (opens in a new tab)⁠
25 Oct 2022
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022)
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COMMERCIAL SPINOFF

SELECTED
Permia Sensing Ltd (opens in a new tab)⁠
1 Jan 2021
Executive Director - Permia Sensing provides precision agriculture solutions to coconut palm growers. It uses acoustic data collected from trees together with other data such as multispectral images and historical data of hydration and fertilising to provide advice to improve the crop level.
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EXTERNAL COMMITTEE

SELECTED
Editorial Board, International Journal or Robotics Research Special Issue on RSS 2020 (opens in a new tab)⁠
1 Jun 2020 - 30 Nov 2021
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EXTERNAL COMMITTEE

SELECTED
UK RAS Strategic Task Group on Soft Robotics (opens in a new tab)⁠
1 Feb 2020 - 30 Apr 2021
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AWARD

SELECTED
Excellence Fund for Learning and Teaching Innovation (opens in a new tab)⁠
22 May 2018
Imperial College London
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GUEST LECTURE
Taking a Soft Robotics Approach to Understand Embodied intelligence
17 Apr 2026
Queens University Belfast
COMMERCIAL SPINOFF
EvoTouch
1 Apr 2026
GUEST LECTURE
Keynote on "Embodied Intelligence: Why Responsible AGI benefits from Physical Grounding"
20 Feb 2026
IEEE ICARC'26
GUEST LECTURE
Keynote titled "Embodied intelligence - the interplay among the body, brain, and the environment"
6 Feb 2026
Techno India University, Kolkata
GUEST LECTURE
Ghost Circuits
27 Apr 2025
RoboSoft 2025
GUEST LECTURE
Mechanical Intelligence in the Physical Body
3 Apr 2025
Embodied Intelligence 2025
GUEST LECTURE
Mechanically intelligent robots and their tranformative potential in reconstructing war affected regions
3 Apr 2025
NATO DIANA workshop on “Technology Innovation for NATO Defence and Security”
GUEST LECTURE
Importance of tuning kinematics during force and movement control
6 Jul 2024
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
EDITORIAL BOARD
International Journal of Robotics Research
1 Jun 2024
Senior Editor
GUEST LECTURE
Algorithms in physical ghost circuits for robots in partially known environments
11 Apr 2024
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
OUTREACH ACTIVITY
Invited talk given to staffers of Sri Lankan Parliamentarians (opens in a new tab)⁠
15 Feb 2024
Sri Lanka Parliament
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OUTREACH ACTIVITY
Pint of Science Festival (opens in a new tab)⁠
23 May 2023
London
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GUEST LECTURE
Keynote speech on "A robotics approach to understand how the brain tunes the body to solve dynamic interaction problems" (opens in a new tab)⁠
21 May 2023
IEEE IAS GlobConET 2023
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GUEST LECTURE
The brain is lazy (opens in a new tab)⁠
3 Apr 2023
IEEE Robosoft 2023
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OUTREACH ACTIVITY
Imperial Lates on drug experiments (opens in a new tab)⁠
9 Feb 2023
Imperial College London
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GUEST LECTURE
Keynote on "Soft robotics for creative computing" (opens in a new tab)⁠
20 Jan 2023
Creative Computing Institute
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GUEST LECTURE
Embodiment and likelihood functions of haptic perception (opens in a new tab)⁠
23 Oct 2022
IROS 2022
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EXTERNAL COMMITTEE
External Examiner at the University of York for the MSc Intelligent Robotics delivered by the school of Physics, Engineering and Technology (opens in a new tab)⁠
26 Sep 2022 - 27 Sep 2026
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GUEST LECTURE
Keynote speech titled "Empowered human co-existence with cobots and soft robots" (opens in a new tab)⁠
25 Aug 2022
ICITACEE 2022
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GUEST LECTURE
RoboPatient: Robot-assisted learning of real-time multimodal sensor integration during physical examination of a patient (opens in a new tab)⁠
23 May 2022
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation - Workshop on "Intelligent Control Methods and Machine Learning Algorithms for Human-Robot Interaction and Assistive Robotics"
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ProfessorThrishantha Nanayakkara

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES