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Contact details:
KENMORE QLD 4069 AUSTRALIA
Biography
David leads the Robotic Design and Interaction Group and is a Principal Research Scientist in the Cyber Physical Systems program at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. He leads multiple projects across robotics, with a specialisation in soft robotics, evolutionary machine learning, and computational design. He founded Soft Robotics research within CSIRO in 2017, and has had a key scientific leadership roles in AIM FSP as well as leading the AI4Design portfolio.
His work has been featured in local and national media and published in leading journals including Nature Machine Intelligence and Science Robotics.
He is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the ACM, and is co-chair of the IEEE-RAS Technical Comittee on Soft Robotics. He is also an ACM Distinguished Speaker, and is an avid proponent of education, STEM, and outreach activities.
He is adjunct associate professor at UQ and QUT, and was a visiting professor at EPFL and Oxford University.
He received his BSc in Computing from the University of Leeds in 2005, and the MSc in Cognitive Systems at the same institution in 2006. In 2011 he received his PhD from the University of the West of England.
Other Interests
I spent a lot of leisure time playing 5-a-side football and running. I'm a fan of York City Football Club.
Professional Areas
Current Roles
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Group Leader
Robotic Design and Interaction -
Principal Research Scientist
Soft Robotics
Academic Qualifications
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2011
PhD Neuroevolutionary Computing
University of the West of England -
2006
MSc Cognitive Systems
University of Leeds -
2005
BSc Computing
University of Leeds
Professional Experiences
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2013-2016
OCE Postdoctoral Fellow
CSIRO -
2010-2013
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of the West of England
Achievements and Awards
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2022-2025
Julius Career Award
CSIRO
Other highlights
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2026--
Best Paper Finalist, IEEE Robosoft
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2026--
Best Student Paper Finalist, IEEE Robosoft
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2022-2025
AI4Design portfolio leader
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2024--
Human-Competitive Award (Flow reactors) USD$1000
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2016-2021
AIM Testbed leader: won funding for 6 projects ~$1.5M/year
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2016-2021
AIM FSP founding member (1 of 3). FSP accepted with $11M funding.
Community and Corporate Citizenship
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2026-2027
General Chair IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics 2027
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2024--
CSIRO Research Integrity Advisor
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2023--
Reviewer for Science, Science Robotics, Nature, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Comms
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2017-present
Pint of Science Presenter
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2013-present
Member of UARACIN programme committee
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2012-present
Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computing, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems
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2011-present
Member of ACM GECCO GBML programme committee
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2011-present
Member of IEEE CEC review committee
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2015-2015
Science Week Presenter
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2015-present
Demo operator for RASG lab tours
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2014-present
Numerous PhD confirmation panels
We have publications by Dr David Howard