First CRL PhD

We are happy to announce that our academic family expanded: Dr. Sven Lilge successfully defended his Ph.D. work Tendon-driven Parallel Continuum Robots: Modeling, Characterization and State Estimation. The final oral examination went smoothly and everyone enjoyed the academic discourse.His committte members, Dr. Jessica Burgner-Kahrs, Dr. Tim Barfoot, Dr. David Levin, Dr. Caleb Rucker, Dr. Igor Gilitschenski, and Dr. Nabil Simaan, were deeply impressed by the depth and breadth of Sven’s PhD thesis.

^{Honouring our lab’s German roots, Sven got to wear the CRL doctoral regalia after his examination and was presented a custom doctoral hat created by his lab mates.}

Join us in celebrating this incredible achievement! Sven’s hard work, dedication, and passion for research have truly paid off. It has been an absolute joy to mentor and guide him throughout his academic journey. Sven joint our parent lab at Leibniz University Hannover in February 2017 and moved to Toronto in spring 2019 to continue working with Jessica. Sven pioneered the research and development of a new continuum robot type: Tendon-driven Parallel Continuum Robots. He authored or co-authored multiple top-tier journal publications and has more in the making. Among those his modeling work in IEEE Transactions on Robotics and state estimation work in the International Journal of Robotics Research. He was recently named as one RSS Pioneer 2023 in recognition of his world-leading early-career research at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference.

Sven will soon embark on the next chapter of his academic career: a postdoctoral position with Tim Barfoort at the ASRL at UofT. We will will miss him at the Continuum Robotics Laboratory!