Venkata Rithwick Puranam

Rithwick is a research assistant at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in the Surgical Robotics and Allied Technologies Area. He obtained his Bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2018 at VNR-VJIET (Hyderabad, India). His thesis titled “Power Generation using Bladeless Wind Turbine” resulted in a conference paper. He pursued his Master’s degree in Mecanical Engineering graduating in 2021 at University of Twente (Enschede, The Netherlands). During this period, he cultivated a keen interest in soft robotics, culminating in his thesis, “Design and Fabrication of Biodegradable Magnetic Soft Robots”, which resulted in both a conference proceeding (Robosoft 2022) and a published journal paper. His exploration of soft robotics continued as a research fellow at IIT Genoa at the “BioInspired Soft Robotics” lab contributing to the development of plant root -inspired robots. Currently he is engaged in the MAPWORMS project, dedicated to the Designing and Fabrication of a soft robotic actuator.