Prof. Dr. Roger Gassert

Roger Gassert is full professor of Rehabilitation Engineering at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich. He received an M.Sc. degree in microengineering and a 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 well-controlled and reproducible interaction with human motion during functional whole-brain neuroimaging. These systems are being used to investigate the neural mechanisms of sensorimotor control and recovery following neurological injury. He subsequently participated in the development and evaluation of pioneering robotic rehabilitation systems to train hand function after stroke as a 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, at the Robotic Systems Lab at EPFL, he directed the joint robotics lab between EPFL and the University of Tokyo, Japan. He joined ETH Zurich as assistant professor of Rehabilitation Engineering in 2008, where he was promoted to associate professor in 2014 and full professor in 2019. He is president of the foundation board of the foundation Access for all and member of the advisory board of the Innovation Centre for Assistive Technologies (IAT) of the Swiss Paraplegic Foundation.