(SoftHands Pro-H and SoftHandler) explored the translation of these concepts in real-world products for prosthetics and industrial applications, respectively. The ERC Synergy 2019 project “Natural BionicS” will produce the first completely integrated bionic limb system with direct spinal interfacing, through the cooperation of three groups at Imperial College (led by D. Farina), University Hospital Wien (O. Aszmann) and IIT (A. Bicchi). Organizer and Educator Bicchi was president of the Italian Society of Automatic Control, twice vice-president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, and collaborates with major centers for technology transfer in the Italian and European industry. He is a consultant for the European Commission, the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR) and agencies in many countries in Europe, America and Asia for the scientific evaluation and accreditation of research centers and universities, research projects, and researchers' careers. In 2005 he founded the WorldHaptics Conference, since then the largest biennial research meeting in the sciences of touch. In 2011 he started the series of conferences Automatica which is the main Italian event in the field of Automatic Controls. In 2015 he founded and was subsequently editor-in-chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters magazine, which in just two years has become the largest scientific journal in the entire field. In 2019 he co-founded the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines (I-RIM), the association of researchers and industrialists in the field whose motto is "AI, fleshed out" References External links 20th-century births Living people Italian roboticists Fellow Members of the IEEE University of Pisa alumni University of Bologna alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Academic staff of the University of Pisa Arizona State University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) European Research Council grantees