Pham Huy Nguyen

Pham Huy Nguyen

Sustainable Soft Robotics towards Climate & Conservation

Research Scientist · Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics, Empa & EPFL

I develop physically intelligent, bio-inspired robotic platforms that use soft sensing and actuation. My work spans aerial, aquatic, wearable, and supernumerary systems, built with nature-derived materials (such as textiles and elastomers) and designed to actively safeguard biodiversity and restore our ecosystems.

Research projects → Curriculum vitae ↗
Portrait of Pham Huy Nguyen

Research vision

Illustrated overview of Pham Huy Nguyen's research vision: environmental challenges (habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, human-wildlife conflict, climate change, invasive species, pollution) addressed through three robotic platforms — soft wearables, supernumerary limbs, and multi-modal musculoskeletal robots — built on a sustainable design paradigm.

My long-term research vision incorporates principles from sustainable design, bio-inspired mechanisms, and nature-derived materials to create multi-modal, life-like robots that serve both the environment and its inhabitants. From material development to deployment, my work aims to tackle the full lifecycle of robots by leveraging functionalized textile materials that integrate computing, sensing, and actuation capabilities. These technologies will be the step change towards minimally invasive ecological monitoring and direct intervention to enable more effective conservation and management efforts. To do so, I intend to foster transdisciplinary collaborations among engineers, biologists, ecologists, designers, and data scientists, developing a nature-inspired, conservation-driven approach to robotics that actively safeguards biodiversity and restores our ecosystems.

Recent

  • Jun 2026 AMBER — tether-deployable gripping crawler with compliant microspines for canopy manipulation — accepted at IROS 2026, Pittsburgh.
  • Jun 2026 Co-organized the ICRA 2026 Workshop on Multi-Modal Robotics for Sustainable Environmental Sensing in Vienna; invited speaker at the Embodied Aerial Robotics Workshop, Bristol Robotics Lab.
  • 2026 Co-organized the Climate Robotics Summit 2026.
  • Mar 2026 Invited seminars on Sustainable Soft Aerial Robotics for Climate and Conservation at the University of Toronto (MIE1299H Bioinspired Robotics) and the University of Sydney (AMME Recruitment).
  • Jan–Feb 2026 Invited talks at the AMLD Intelligence Summit 2026 (Lausanne), 11th R&D Conference Swissmem (Zurich), and the Robotics Gordon Research Conference (Ventura).
  • 2025 Awarded the RoboSoft Rising Star Award (IEEE RoboSoft 2025) and two SNSF bilateral grants with Croatia — MIMISK (WEAVE, CHF 799k) and MetaMorpher (MINT, CHF 403k) — ~1.2M CHF combined over 3 years.