Adam A. Stokes: About Me

CV Overview

by aastokes | Aug 27, 2024 | About Me

AdamStokes2019 less than 1mb.

Professor Adam A. Stokes B.Eng(Hons), M.Res, PhD, FIES

My CV is split into two sections: academic and entrepreneurial. This split reflects my desire to discover more about the world through careful observation and research, and my aim to improve the world we live in by ensuring that our inventions leave the lab and that they solve problems that people care about.

For speaking enquiries, advisory projects, or to discuss any of the ideas raised on this site: a.a.stokes@ed.ac.uk

Academic Career:

My day-job is Full Professor and Head of The Institute for Bioengineering at the School of Engineering at The University of Edinburgh where I hold the Personal Chair in Bioinspired Engineering. I hold degrees in engineering, biomedical science, and analytical chemistry and my primary academic interest is two-fold: 1. Exploring how the natural world has solved problems, and 2. Abstracting and exploring these natural approaches to aid in developing engineering solutions for problems that people care about. I lead a team of approximately 20 people in my interdisciplinary research laboratory – The Soft Systems Group – where we focus on the intersection of next-generation robotics technology, bioelectronics, and bioinspired engineering.

I have secured more than £60M as consortium research funding from EPSRC and InnovateUK, with around £5M directed specifically to my research group. I was the Academic-PI on the £6.5M InnovateUK “Connect-R” grant and was part of the core team for the £40M ORCA Hub. My pioneering research in Soft Robotics and Soft Systems has received over 8800 citations, with publications in leading scientific journals including Science, PNAS, and Advanced Intelligent Systems.

I am one of the four founding Co-Leads of The National Robotarium, the UK centre of excellence in robotics, which was founded as a result of a £20M capital investment from the City Region Deal in Edinburgh for Hubs in Data Driven Innovation. I also serve as the Deputy Director and am a founding member of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, we’ve recently secured funding for a new Centre for Doctoral Training in “Dependable and Deployable AI for Robotics” which will train ~80 PhD students in this exciting new area. I have recently founded a new MSc in Biomedical Engineering which is a joint programme between The University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.

I serve as a member of the Royal Commission for the Great Exhibition of 1851’s Industry and Engineering Committee, as Associate Editor for the Journal of Soft Robotics, and as Co-Chair of the Steering Committee for the IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, which will take place in Kanazawa, Japan this year.

– 2025-Present: Elected as Fellow of the Institute for Engineers in Scotland

– 2025-Present: Head of The Institute for Bioengineering

– 2022-Present: Professor and Personal Chair of Bioinspired Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

– 2022-Present: Founding Co-Lead of the UK National Robotarium

– 2021-2022: Reader in Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

– 2020: Principal’s Award for Innovation.

– 2019-2025: Deputy Head of Research Institute, Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems.

– 2019-2021: Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

– 2014: Elected as a Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland

– 2012-2019: Lecturer, School of Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

– 2010-2012: Harvard University, Fellow, George M. Whitesides Group, Dept of Chemistry and Chemical Biology & The Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering

Entrepreneurial Career: