Leonardo Cappello

Leonardo Cappello graduated in Mechanical Engineering (BS) in 2009 and in Biomedical Engineering (MS) in 2011 at the University of Florence, Italy. In 2016 he accomplished his PhD in “Robotics, Cognition and Interaction Technologies” at the Italian Institute of Technology, advised by Prof. Lorenzo Masia. During his PhD, he was visiting student at the Nanyang Technological University, Robotics Research Centre, Singapore (2014 - 2015).

He was Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, in the team lead by Prof. Conor Walsh, where he worked on soft wearable robots for upper limb sensorimotor restoration (2016 - 2017). He was then Postdoctoral Researcher at the BioRobotics Institute - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Italy) - investigating advanced robotic prostheses and prosthetic techniques for the upper extremities, working closely with Prof. Christian Cipriani and Prof. Marco Controzzi (2017-2022).

Leonardo Cappello started his academic path in 2022 as Assistant Professor at the BioRobotics Institute - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Italy), where he funded the Textile Robotics Laboratory, in the stimulating environment of the Artificial Hands Area, and where he works on the design of textile-based robotic wearables for human sensorimotor restoration and augmentation. His research interests include haptics, assistive and rehabilitation robotics, prosthetics and orthotics, and motor neurosciences.

He was recently awarded with the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC StG) for the project MUsculoSkeletal Expansion (MUSE). He also obtained the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR) in 2015, held in Singapore.