Biography
& Curriculum Vitae
Born in 1967 near Venice, Italy, Raffaello D’Andrea moved with his family to Canada where, in 1991, he received a Bachelor of Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, graduating first in his class. D’Andrea completed his formal studies at the California Institute of Technology where he was granted his Master of Science in 1992, and his PhD in 1997.
From 1997 to 2007 D’Andrea was professor at Cornell University, during which time he received a National Science Foundation Career Award (2000), a United States Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (2001), several teaching awards and, in his role as faculty advisor and system architect, led the Cornell Robot Soccer Team to four RoboCup World Championships. Cornell’s success at RoboCup led D’Andrea to appearances on Scientific American Frontiers, to the Spoleto Festival and the Smithsonian.
While building his academic career, D’Andrea was also creating a reputation in the art world where his collaborative efforts with Canadian artist Max Dean were capturing the imagination of festival- and exhibition-goers around the world. Their first collaboration, “The Table”, appeared at the 2001 Venice Biennale, was featured on the Discovery Channel and is part of the National Gallery of Canada’s permanent collection. Then, in 2006, they unveiled their second collaboration, “The Robotic Chair”, at the ideaCity conference in Toronto. “The Robotic Chair” went on to win a coveted place at Ars Electronica, later graced the cover of Border Crossings, and also appeared on the Discovery Channel. The subject of a short film by documentary director Peter Lynch, the “The Robotic Chair’ continues to tour at venues worldwide.
In 2004 D’Andrea branched out once again, this time into the business world: he became a founding member of Boston-area high-tech firm Kiva Systems in order to help develop the control systems and algorithms behind their ‘Intelligent Warehouse’. A revolutionary inventory-handling system that coordinates hundreds of autonomous mobile robots, Kiva’s robotic warehouse has appeared on the Discovery Channel and is helping distribution giants like Walgreens and Staples fill two to three times as many orders as they could with conventional methods. D’Andrea has eight patents and patents pending with Kiva Systems.
In 2007, D’Andrea was given the opportunity to bring his diverse interests together. Offered a full-professorship at ETH Zurich with the freedom to design his own research agenda, D’Andrea seized the opportunity to cross over the line conventionally drawn between the arts and the sciences. His goal: to develop his research on autonomous systems within a more unconstrained and creative paradigm than the utilitarian model that scientific research is typically based on. With the desire to create a novel learning environment that would act as a catalyst for innovation, D’Andrea now leads an interdisciplinary team that brings together expertise in mathematics, engineering, systems design and the arts.
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