Roger Gassert

Roger Gassert is Professor of Rehabilitation Engineering at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich. Born in 1976 in Solothurn, Switzerland, he received the M.Sc. degree in microengineering and the Ph.D. degree in neuroscience robotics from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland in 2002 and 2006, respectively. During his Ph.D., partially carried out at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, he developed an MRI-​compatible robot technology that lead to the first haptic interfaces allowing safe and gentle interaction with human motion during functional MRI. These systems are now being used to investigate sensorimotor control and learning with partners in Japan, the UK and Switzerland.

He subsequently participated in the development and clinical evaluation of pioneering robotic rehabilitation systems to train hand function after stroke as postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. From December 2007 to November 2008 he headed the joint robotics lab between EPFL and the University of Tokyo at the Robotic Systems Lab at EPFL. He joined ETH Zurich in 2008 as as Assistant Professor, and was promoted to Associate/Full Professor in 2014/2019.

Roger Gassert is vice president of the strategic board of the CYBATHLON, member of the foundation boards of Access for allcall_made and cefir, the cereneocall_made center for interdisciplinary research in telerehabilitation, as well as member of the scientific advisory board of the Innovation Centre for Assistive Technologiescall_made of the Swiss Paraplegic Foundationcall_made.