John-John Cabibihan

John-John Cabibihan received the Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering, with specialization in Biorobotics, from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, in 2007. Concurrent with his Ph.D. studies, he was accepted to the co-tutors PhD programme of the École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France. Therein, he spent one year with the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie in 2005. In 2021, he completed the Venture Creation and Finance Programmes at the University of Oxford, UK.

From 2008 to 2013, he was an Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, where he served as the Deputy Director of the Social Robotics Laboratory. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, Qatar University. He serves as the Program Coordinator of the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Program and a Member of the Faculty Senate (Research Committee). He is Lead/Co-Lead Principal Investigator of several projects under the National Priorities Research Program of Qatar National Research Fund.

Dr. Cabibihan is among the top 2% of researchers worldwide according to the standardized citation metrics (2020). He is ranked #1 in Qatar, #4 in the Middle East, #228 in Asia, and #510 worldwide for the category of Industrial Engineering and Automation (subfield Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing). In April 2021, he was recognized as a Distinguished Scientist by Qatar University.

Dr. Cabibihan is an inventor in 18 patent families and has over 150 publications (journal articles, books, and conference papers). Using the ranking data from the 2021 Clarivate Journal Citation Report, 77% of Dr. Cabibihan’s journal publications are in the Q1 (45%) and Q2 (32%) categories. His research in robotics, 4D/3D printing, virtual reality, and biomimetics has attracted more than US$ 5.7 million in grants from various funding agencies.

He is an Associate Editor/Editorial Board Member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (Section on Bionics and Biomimetics), International Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems, and Springer Nature Applied Sciences Journal. He was a co-Founding Assistant Editor/Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of the Social Robotics and a co-Founding Organizer of the International Conference on Social Robotics (2009).

He actively served the robotics community as General Chair of the International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR) 2018 in Qingdao, China; and IEEE Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems & Robotics, Automation, and Mechatronics (CIS-RAM) 2013 in Manila, Philippines; as Program Chair/Co-Chair of the IEEE Symposium of Robot-Human Interactive Communications (Ro-Man) 2019 in New Delhi, India; ICSR 2019 in Madrid, Spain; ICSR 2017 in Tsukuba, Japan; ICSR 2016 in Kansas City, USA; ICSR 2012 in Chengdu, China; and ICSR 2010 in Singapore; and as a Member of the Standing Committee of ICSR 2021 in Singapore.

Over the years, his work has been focused toward healthcare robotics, more specifically in assistive and social robotics for the therapy of children with autism, lifelike prosthetics, bio-inspired tactile sensing, human-robotic touch and gestures, and robotic surgery. His works were featured by Nature Materials, MIT Technology Review, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Popular Science, New Scientist, Discovery News, New York Magazine, and in thefront pages of Peninsula Qatar, among others. His team's telepresence UV robot was exhibited at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2021 in Russia.