CV&Publications

You can find my detailed CV here

Work experience

• Dec. 2025- Present: Research Scientist
  • Ultimage Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.
  • Development of a novel continuum surgical robotic system for endoscopic surgery
  • Cooperation Professor: Prof. Jia Gu
• Nov. 2021- Sep. 2022: Research Assistant
  • King’s College London and Tsinghua University
  • Research about optical tactile sensors, including sensor simulation, Sim2Real transfer learning, and reinforcement learning
  • Cooperation Professors: Prof. Shan Luo and Prof. Bin Fang

Education

• Ph.D. (with distinction) in Biorobotics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, 2022-2025
• Exchange Ph.D. student at EPFL, Aug-Oct, 2024
• M.Sc. (with distinction) in Control Systems at Imperial College, 2020-2021

Five Representative Publications

(Please refer to Google Scholar for the complete publication list.)

Z. Chen, Q. Guan, J. Hughes, et al., “A Versatile Neural Network Configuration Space Planning and Control Strategy for Modular Soft Robot Arms,” in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 41, pp. 4269-4282, 2025.

Z. Chen, X. Ren, Y. Hamamatsu, et al., “AdapJ: An Adaptive Extended Jacobian Controller for Soft Manipulators,” in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 2025. (accepted)

Z. Chen, F. Renda, A. Le Gall, et al., “Data-driven Methods Applied to Soft Robot Modeling and Control: A Review,” in IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 22, pp. 2241-2256, 2025.

Z. Chen, D. Wu, Q. Guan, D. Hardman, F. Renda, J. Hughes, T. G. Thuruthe, C. Della Santina, B. Mazzolai, H. Zhao, and C. Stefanini, “A Survey on Soft Robot Adaptability: Implementations, Applications, and Prospects,” in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (accepted)

Z. Chen, M. Bernabei, V. Mainardi, et al., “A Novel and Accurate BiLSTM Configuration Controller for Modular Soft Robots with Module Number Adaptability,” in Soft Robotics (accepted)

Academic Service

Peer Review Contributions:

npj Robotics, T-RO, TMECH, T-ASE, SoRo, TIE, T-MRB, RAS, RA-L, IROS, ICRA

Workshops:

I am the main organizer of the serial workshops ‘SOFT Frontiers’:

ICRA 2026 ‘The SOFT Frontier 3: Soft or Rigid? New Trends in Wearable Robotics’

IROS 2025 ‘The SOFT Frontier 2: Practical Applications in Soft Robotics’

IROS 2024 ‘The SOFT Frontier: Adaptive Technologies in Soft Robotics’