Prof Cecilia Laschi joins the ME department as a full professor. She graduated in Computer Science at the University of Pisa in 1993 and received the Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Genoa in 1998. In 2001-2002 she was JSPS visiting researcher at Waseda University in Tokyo. She has been Full Professor of Biorobotics at the BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy, serving as the Institute Deputy Director. Her research interests are in biorobotics and she is currently working in soft robotics, exploring the use of soft materials for building robots, a young research area that she pioneered and contributed to develop at international level. She has been working in humanoid robotics and neurorobotics, i.e. the use of robots for neuroscience research.