Prof. Dr. Katja Mombaur

Katja Mombaur is Full Professor at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics at KIT where she holds the Chair of Optimization & Biomechanics for Human-Centred Robotics (HCR) and is Director of the BioRobotics Lab. In addition, she holds an affiliation with the University Waterloo in Canada where she has been Full Professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) for Human-Centred Robotics & Machine Intelligence since 2020. Prior to moving to Canada, she has been a Full Professor at Heidelberg University where she directed the Optimization, Robotics & Biomechanics Chair, as well as the Heidelberg Center for Motion Research.  

She studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of Stuttgart and SupAéro in Toulouse and holds a PhD in Mathematics from Heidelberg University. Her international experience includes two years as a visiting researcher at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse and one year at Seoul National University.  

Katja Mombaur currently serves as the Vice President for Member Activities of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society and co-chair of the TC on Humanoid Robots. She is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and has actively contributed to the organization of many conferences and workshops, in various roles e.g. as Program Chair of the IEEE RAS Humanoids 2023 conference.

Her research focuses on understanding human movement by a combined approach of model-based optimization and experiments and using this knowledge to improve motions of humanoid robots and the interactions of humans with exoskeletons, prostheses and external physical devices. Her goal is to endow humanoid and wearable robots with motion intelligence that allow them to operate safely in a complex human world. The development of efficient algorithms for motion generation, control and learning is a core component of her research.