Faculty Member Wins in Queen Mary UK Best PhD in Robotics Award

De La Salle University faculty member Dr. Alexander Abad from the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering of the Gokongwei College of Engineering garnered the second spot in the prestigious Queen Mary UK Best PhD in Robotics Award sponsored by the Centre for Advanced Robotics @ Queen Mary (ARQ). 

He is the first Filipino student to finish in the top three in the competition’s history.

Abad for his PhD research focused on the development of a novel sensor—a multimodal, fine-grained visuotactile system that could be used in telemedicine and telerobotics, especially in remote sensing applications such as search and rescue and space exploration.

His thesis, titled “Fine-grained Haptics: Sensing and Actuating Haptic Primary Colours (force, vibration, and temperature)”, was completed under the program PhD in Computer Science and Informatics at Liverpool Hope University, UK, which he pursued with support from the Department of Science and Technology – Engineering Research and Development for Technology (DOST-ERDT) Foreign PhD scholarship and Mme. Maillefer Study Program of DLSU. 

The competition was open to those who attended their PhD program in the field of robotics at a UK university. Their works were reviewed by international experts and members of the Excellence Committee. 

Abad presented his research last September 14 at the 2023 TAROS Conference, which is the longest running UK-hosted international conference on robotics and autonomous systems.

He conducted his PhD research under the supervision of Dr. Anuradha Ranasinghe. He likewise expressed gratitude to Director of Studies, Professor David Reid, as well as DOST-ERDT and DLSU.