How Haptic Interactions in Humans Improve Performance and Learning of Complex Motor Tasks

Domenico Formica received a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma in 2008. Until 2022, he was also an Associate Professor at the Roman university, where he co-founded the NEXT: Neurophysiology and Neuroengineering of Human-Technology Interaction research unit, a multidisciplinary research group that focuses on the study of motor neuroscience in both healthy subjects and neurological patients.

From 2014 to 2018, Formica was a visiting scientist at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. He is currently Professor of Bioengineering at Newcastle University, where he leads the Neurorobotics group. His research interests lie at the intersection of robotics/mechatronics and neuroscience. They include the areas of mechatronic technologies for studying human motor control, quantitative assessment of patients with neuromuscular disorders, and novel robotic devices to improve motor learning. On these topics he published more than 160 peer-reviewed scientific papers in international journals and conference proceedings.

Formica also actively contributed to several EU-funded projects and is currently the principal investigator of the EU project NIMA and the European coordinator of CONBOTS (CONnected through roBOTS). At The Summit, his CONBOTS talk will focus on how haptic interactions in humans improve performance and learning of complex motor tasks.