Barbara Mazzolai is the Associate Director for Robotics and Director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genoa. Previously, she led the IIT Center for Micro-BioRobotics from 2011 to 2021 and served as Deputy Director for the Supervision and Organization of the IIT Centers Network from July 2012 to 2017. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Biology (with honors) from the University of Pisa, Italy, and a Ph.D. in Microsystems Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. In 2017, she was a Visiting Faculty member at the Aerial Robotics Lab, Department of Aeronautics, at Imperial College London. In 2024, she was appointed as a contract professor to teach a course on Soft Robotics at the Politecnico of Milan.
Since 2024, she has been a member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. She previously served on the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Tübingen and Stuttgart, Germany) from 2016 to 2024 and is currently a member of the SAB at the Max Planck Queensland Centre (MPQC) for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices. Additionally, she is part of the Advisory Committee for the Cluster on Living Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS) in Freiburg, Germany. Since 2024, she has also served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Soft Robotics journal.
In 2020, she obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification for Full Professor in Bioengineering. Barbara Mazzolai's research focuses on bioinspired soft robotics, combining principles from biology and engineering to drive technological innovation and scientific discovery. She has coordinated several EU-funded projects in this field, including the FET-Open PLANTOID project (FP7-293431), the FET-Proactive GrowBot Project (https://www.growbot.eu/), and the EU H2020 FET Environmental Intelligence project "I-Seed" (https://www.iseedproject.eu/). In May 2021, she launched her European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant project, "I-Wood," which explores forest intelligence through robotic networks inspired by the Wood Wide Web. Since January 2020, she has been a National Geographic Explorer with the grant “RoKER - Roots of Knowledge with Environmental Robots.”
She has extensive experience as a researcher and project manager on European projects related to biorobotics, soft robotics, and environmental robotics. Her notable projects include OCTOPUS (FP7-231608), HydroNet (FP7-212790), DustBot (FP6-045299), EMECAP (QLK4-CT-2000-00489), and the SeedBot ESA-ARIADNA Project.
Dr. Mazzolai has authored or co-authored over 260 papers in international journals, books, and conference proceedings. She has also published popular science books for both adults and children, including “La Natura Geniale” (2019) and "Il futuro raccontato dalle piante" (2021) with Longanesi Ed.; "Perché i robot sono stupidi e altre domande sulla tecnologia," co-authored with Federico Taddia (2021); and "L'incredibile Plantoide e i superpoteri del regno vegetale," co-authored with Chiara Valentina Segré (2022) (Editoriale Scienza).
Invited as a speaker at national and international scientific events, Dr. Mazzolai regularly organizes workshops and special sessions on soft robotics, bioinspired robotics, and plant-inspired growing robots at major conferences for both the scientific community and the general public. She is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of Advanced Intelligent Systems, the Editorial Board of Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Soft Robotics, Biomimetics, and Robotics & Automation Letters. Additionally, she serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Advanced Materials Technologies and is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, Frontiers in Bionics and Biomimetics, and Frontiers in Robotics and AI - Soft Robotics.
In 2023, she served as the General Chair of the International Conference on Living Machines. In 2024, she was the General Co-Chair of the IEEE RoboSoft Conference, and in 2020, she was the General Co-Chair of the I-RIM Conference. Additionally, she has served as an Associate Editor for ICRA (2016-2020), IEEE RA-L (2016-2020), and IROS (2013, 2017, 2020). She held the position of Interdisciplinary Program Co-Chair for RoboSoft (2018-2019) and Government Forum Co-Chair for IROS (2016). Dr. Mazzolai has also been the Publicity Co-Chair for BIOROB (2012) and the Workshop Co-Chair for both I-RIM (2019) and RoboSoft (2020).
She is a member of the IEEE, the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), the Materials Research Society (MRS), and the Italian Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM).
