Lab Members

Josep Maria is Full Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He is also the Director of the UPC Doctoral School and Assistant Director for Innovation at the Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering (CREB). In the past, he served as Assistant Director for Research and Technology Transfer (2017-2021) and Postgraduate Studies (2013-2017) at the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB). Josep Maria obtained the Master’s Degrees in Industrial Engineering (minor in Mechanical Engineering) and Biomedical Engineering from UPC, and received his PhD Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Universitat de Girona. Then, he was postdoctoral fellow at the Applied Dynamics Group of the Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM) at McGill University (Canada). In 2009, he founded the Biomechanical Engineering Lab (BIOMEC) at UPC. The group develops computational methods for the analysis and prediction of human movement, innovative robotic exoskeletons for gait assistance, and wearable monitoring technology for rehabilitation. Josep Maria has published more than 40 articles in indexed journals, 130 conference papers, and has supervised or co-supervised 7 PhD theses. He is Editorial Board member of the journal Multibody System Dynamics, and currently chairs the Technical Committee for Multibody Dynamics of IFToMM. Josep Maria also co-founded the company ABLE Human Motion, which develops exoskeleton technology for people with mobility impairments. His work has been recognized by several awards, such as the Agustín de Betancourt y Molina Medal awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering (2017), the OpenSim Outstanding Researcher Award (2017), the prestigious Leonardo Grant by the BBVA Foundation (2018), and the UPC Award for Social Commitment (2021).

Ana is Associate Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona since 1988. She studied Theoretical Physics at the University of Barcelona, and received her PhD Degree in that university in June 1987. So far she has conducted her research in various areas (acoustics, nonlinear vibrations, percussive dynamics, biomechanics) in collaboration with several institutions located in different countries. That has led to numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference papers. She was the coordinator at the UPC for two ALFA projects, funded by the European Commission, which included six high education institutions from six different countries (Spain, France, Germany, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay). Between 2004 and 2012, she also coordinated the Erasmus Mundus Master of Mechanical Engineering, a European master involving the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) in Lyon (France), Trinity College in Dublin (Ireland) and the UPC. Ana is currently main researcher at UPC for a collaboration agreement between the department “Beam and Instrumentation” in CERN and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UPC.

Rosa is Associate Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UPC in Barcelona. She received her Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering (2008) from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Then, she worked at Fundació CIM, a technological centre linked to UPC, and joined the Biomechanical Engineering Lab as PhD student and teaching assistant. In 2012, she received her PhD degree, having specialized in biomechanics with a study on application of multibody dynamics techniques to the analysis of human walking. During her PhD, Rosa enjoyed a six‐month stay at the Laboratory of Mechanical Engineering of University of La Coruña (Spain) and, after the PhD, a six‐month postdoctoral stay at the Centre for Intelligent Machines of McGill University (Canada) in 2013. During 2013‐2014, she worked as Visiting Professor at Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain). Moreover, in spring 2016 she carried out a research fellowship at the Centre de réadaptation Marie Enfant du CHU Sainte-Justine (Polytechnique Montréal). Currently, her work focuses on dynamic simulation, biomechanics, foot‐ground contact modelling, and pediction of human movement using optimal control techniques.

Massimo Cenciarini is an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UPC in Barcelona. He received his Laureate degree in Electronic Engineering (Biomedical major) from the University of Bologna, Italy; and his Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His research career started at the Human Spatial Orientation Laboratory, OHSU-NSI, Portland, OR, USA working with Dr. Robert Peterka on models of human postural control and of eye movements. Later, during his doctorate with Prof. Patrick Loughlin, his research at the Pitt-MVRC led to extend a model of postural control to include aging and attention in postural control. During that time, he also worked on fall detection in a collaboration with Robert Bosch Corp. His first post-doc experience was with Prof. Aaron Dollar, in the GRAB Lab at Yale University working on lower limb exoskeletons and active orthoses. Later, he joined the group of Dr. Christoph Maurer, in the Neurology Department, at the University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany. He worked on developing biomechanical markers for Parkinson’s disease patients and developed balance control models. He joined the BIOMEC Lab at CREB-UPC with a Tecniospring INDUSTRY fellowship (Marie Curie Actions [COFUND] – H2020, EU) to work on the development of lower limbs exoskeletons for homecare use. He also collaborates with ABLE Human Motion. He is currently focusing on developing technologies and methodologies for mobility assistance and system identification applied to mobility impairments.

Míriam received her Master’s Degrees in Industrial Engineering (2014) and Biomedical Engineering (2016), and her PhD in Biomedical Engineering (2020) from UPC. She joined the BIOMEC Lab to work in the HIPART project coordinating a clinical study with patients who underwent total hip arthroplasty. She developed her PhD on the prediction of human movement using optimal control techniques, with the aim of personalizing the controller of a knee-ankle-foot orthosis for spinal cord-injured subjects. From January to June 2018, she did a predoctoral research stay at the Rice Computational Neuromechanics Lab, where she gained knowledge in developing subject-specific models for predictive simulations. From March to June 2021, she did a postdoctoral research stay at the Laboratory for Movement Biomechanics at ETH Zürich, Switzerland, thanks to an ESB Mobility Award. During this stay, she applied musculoskeletal simulations of full body and joint level mechanics to investigate the role of co-contraction on knee joint contact forces after total knee replacement. She received a grant from the RMS Foundation (Bettlach, Switzerland) to continue this collaboration until February 2022. Míriam received a Margarita Salas postdoctoral fellowship in November 2021, for doing a one-year research stay at the Human Movement Biomechanics Research Group at KU Leuven, Belgium. During her stay, she used predictive simulations based on personalized musculoskeletal models to gain insights into the origins of variable responses to ankle-foot orthoses in children with cerebral palsy. On July 2023, she obtained a position as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the UPC.

Daniel is Lecturer of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona. He obtained the Engineer Degree in Industrial Engineering (specialization in Mechanical Engineering) in 1991. Since this year, he has been employed by the UPC and has been active in teaching tasks in the area of mechanical engineering, both at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. He has been involved in many projects related to the dynamics of machines, and has specialized in multibody dynamics simulation and mechanical design. In 2007, Daniel joined the Research Group on Cooperation and Human Development at UPC, where he has participated in research projects for the study and development of low cost and low power wind turbines for the electrification of rural areas in developing countries. In 2013, he joined the Biomechanical Engineering Lab (BIOMEC) of the UPC Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering (CREB), where he designs and tests novel actuation systems for robotic exoskeletons.

Ana is a postdoctoral researcher working on enhancing the rehabilitation of individuals with spinal cord injuries (SCI). She received her bachelor’s degree in Control and Automation Engineering (2012), master’s in Mechatronics Systems (2014) and PhD in Electronic Systems and Automation Engineering (2019) at the Universidade de Brasília (Brazil). During her master’s, she secured funding from the Petrobras HR Program to implement communication protocols for mobile robots. Moreover, she worked on the Empowering Mobility & Autonomy project during her doctoral research and participated at the Cybathlon 2016. Her achievements were acknowledged through awards, such as the Young Author Award at the IFAC-BMS and Best Research Discovery at the OpenSim Virtual Workshop (2018). From April 2017 to April 2018, she also worked as a visiting research assistant at the TU Berlin (Germany) Control Systems department, where she worked with data processing of electromyography when patients use functional electrical stimulation (FES). From 2020 to 2023, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Griffith Centre of Biomedical & Rehabilitation Engineering from Griffith University (Australia) in a project to restore movement and sensation in individuals with SCI using FES cycling exercise, among other technologies. She led a team of five researchers, ensuring system integration and adherence to safety measures. At UPC, her current position is funded by the Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship Programme 2021 (AGAUR), leveraging her expertise in neurorehabilitation technology and innovative problem-solving within CREB’s experience with computational modelling and simulations.

Antonio is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UPC in Barcelona. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the UPC in 2016, his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Universidad de Zaragoza in 2017 (with a focus on biomechanics and biomaterials) and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the UPC in 2023. He began his PhD studies at the BIOMEC Lab in 2019, where he collaborated with ABLE Human Motion on the clinical evaluation and development of a lower limb exoskeleton for gait rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injuries (SCI). He completed a predoctoral research stay at the Cognitive Robotics Department of the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) from September 2021 to February 2022, where he gained knowledge in motor learning and virtual reality, eventually developing a virtual environment to train and support the learning of using wearable exoskeletons. He is currently working on the public-private ABLE Daily Exo project, which is funded by MCIN/AEI and the European Union NextGenerationEU, to develop a wearable lower limb exoskeleton for home use.

Joan Lobo Prat received his BSc. degree in Industrial Design Engineering from ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering, and two MSc. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the UPC-UB and TU Delft. He carried out his master graduation project in the Hospital of Neurorehabilitation Institut Guttmann in collaboration with the BIOMEC Lab. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Twente working at the Department of Biomechanical Engineering on the Flextension A-Gear project. During his Ph.D. he developed exoskeletons to support the arm function of adults with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Afterwards he worked at the company Focal Meditech developing the ExoArm, a robotic device for people with severe muscular weakness. The following two years, with the support of a Balsells Fellowship, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. David Reinkensmeyer at the Biorobotics Lab of the University of California Irvine (UCI). During his time at UCI he developed the MOVit device. Afterwards, he joined the Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (CSIC-UPC) with a Juan de la Cierva Formación postdoctoral fellowship to continue his research on rehabilitation/assistive technology. Currently he is working as Rehabilitation Engineer at ABLE Human Motion in close collaboration with the BIOMEC Lab at CREB-UPC.

Joaquim was Full Professor of Mechanics at the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) for a period of 44 years (1970-2014). He is currently Emeritus Professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona since 2014, member of the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona since 1994, and member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans since 1990. In 1968, he obtained the Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from UPC. He received his PhD Degree in Mechanical Engineering from that same university in 1975. Throughout his whole scientific career, Joaquim has been promoting research in the fields of Applied Mechanics and Musical Acoustics. Within the first one, the development of vehicles and mobile robots with omnidirectional wheels is particularly outstanding. His work in that domain lead to the design of a motorized wheelchair –Triesfèrica (2003)–, able to move laterally (thus providing higher mobility than conventional wheelchairs). From a more theoretical point of view, his contributions in the study of rough collisions in multibody systems were numerous and original, leading to several articles in international research journals (under the name of Batlle) and the supervision of a doctoral thesis. His research on Musical Acoustics has also been published in different international scientific journals (under the name of Agulló). He was the leader of a team working on that field, whose research resulted in five doctoral theses. Recently, Joaquim has been the coordinator of two research programs of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) devoted to the acoustics of shawms and which concluded with the design of a new musical instrument, the barítona. In 1997 he was awarded with the Medalla Narcís Monturiol al mèrit científic i tecnològic.