Dr. Jessica Burgner-Kahrs

Jessica Burgner-Kahrs is an Associate Professor with the Departments for Mathematical & Computational Sciences, Computer Science, and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, the founding Director of the Continuum Robotics Laboratory, and an Associate Director of the Robotics Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada. She received her Diplom and doctoral degree in computer science from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany in 2006 and 2010 respectively. Afterwards, she was a postdoctoral fellow with Vanderbilt University, USA. Before joining the University of Toronto in 2019, Jessica was Associate Professor at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, where she established the term “Kontinuumsroboter” and was funded by the pestigious Emmy Noether Research Programme of the German Research Foundation. 

Her research focuses on continuum robotics and in particular on design, modelling, planning and control, as well as human-robot interaction. Her fundamental robotics research is driven by applications in minimally invasive surgery and maintenance, repair, and operations. Her research was recognized with the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, the Engineering Science Prize, the Lower Saxony Science Award in the category Young Researcher, and she was named Young Researcher of the Year 2015 in Germany. She was elected as one of the Top 40 Under 40 in the category Science and Society in 2015, 2016, and 2017 by the business magazine Capital, and elected one of 100 Young Global Leaders from the World Economic Forum in 2019. Jessica is a Senior member of the IEEE, a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society, and serves as a senior editor for IEEE RA-L.