Luca Tonin is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova.
He received the Ph.D. degree in robotics from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2013. He then pursued three years of postdoctoral research at the Intelligent Autonomous System laboratory, the University of Padova, Italy. Since 2016, he has been senior postdoctoral researcher at EPFL. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova.
His research is strongly characterized by a commitment to the brain-machine interface (BMI) field and the intertwined neuroscientific and engineering aspects. He dedicated the past decade to explore new solutions for advanced interactions between user, BMI and external devices. On one hand, he developed strong expertise in the key aspects of BMI systems: from the analysis and the real-time processing of neural signals to the specific machine learning techniques commonly exploited in the field. On the other, his research revolved around the natural control of non-invasive BMI-driven neuroprostheses and the concept of shared-autonomy where high-level estimated user’s intentions are coupled to artificial intelligence in order to drive complex robotic devices. Finally, he acquired profound competences in the translational evaluation of BMI technology with healthy subjects and a large number of end-users suffering from different kinds of motor and cognitive disabilities.
Luca Tonin is Guest Associated Editor for the journal “Frontiers in Robotics and AI” and Review Editor for the journals “Frontiers in Neurorobotics”, “Frontiers in Human Neuroscience” and “Frontiers in Brain-Computer Interfaces”. In 2019 and in 2020 he served as a chairman for IEEE SMC Conference (special session at the BMI Workshop). Since 2020, he is in charge of the course “Neurorobotics and neurorehabilitation” at the Department of Information Engineering.
In 2016, Dr. Tonin won the first international Cybathlon paralympic event as a leader of the BrainTweakers team (EPFL). In 2019, Dr. Tonin won the Cybathlon BCI Series as a leader of the WHI Team (University of Padova).