Adam A. Stokes
Welcome to my personal webpage, where you’ll find a collection of essays on topics I’m actively trying to understand. These are not static publications but live documents that evolve over time as I think in public, refine my views, and respond to new ideas and conversations. If you wish to discuss anything I’ve written, or wish to engage with me on a project or a talk, then please contact me. My primary email address is a.a.stokes@ed.ac.uk.I am Full Professor and Head of the Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Edinburgh and a research-led advisor on robotics, AI, and bioinspired innovation. Outside of the academy I am an active entrepreneur and consultant. I work with organisations to stress-test assumptions about emerging technologies and chart practical paths from prototype to deployment. These essays capture the thinking behind that work—I offer them as a public resource and also as an invitation to collaborate.
My most recent post is shown below, see all essays here.
Wintering and reflecting on a year in post as Head of The Institute for Bioengineering
Below is a letter sent to my institute in January 2026 after a year in post as Head of The Institute for Bioengineering. It serves a purpose as an open letter on my reflections of 2025. Dear colleagues, Welcome back. I hope the winter break brought you a great deal of rest and restoration. As we return to the Institute in early January, I’ve been reflecting on where we find ourselves—not at a beginning, but at a midpoint. We are halfway through the academic year, deep in the season of winter, in what the writer Katherine May calls the practice of “wintering.” This is not a time for dramatic New Year resolutions or beginning a new sprint into relentless productivity, but rather for something more subtle and, I would argue, more essential: contemplation, continuation, and care. Nature, which inspires all of my work in bioinspired engineering, offers us clear lessons about this season. Trees are not dead in winter—they are dormant, conserving energy, their roots quietly working...