ProfessorIan Manchester

Ian Manchester received BE and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of New South Wales in 2002 and 2006, respectively. From 2006-2009 he was a post-doctoral researcher at Umea University, Sweden, and from 2009-2012 he was a Research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Since 2012 he has been a faculty member at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he is currently Professor of Mechatronic Engineering. In 2018 he became Director of Research for the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), in 2019 he become co-Director of the Sydney Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems and was awarded a Sydney Research Accelerator Fellowship Award (SOAR).

In 2021 Professor Manchester was announced as the Director of the ACFR and led a team of academic and industry partners to found the ARC Research Hub in Intelligent Robotic Systems for Asset Management.

His current research interests are in algorithms for control, estimation, and identification of nonlinear dynamical systems. A particular focus is planning and control for challenging problems in robotics, including dynamic walking robots and multi-robot systems. He has also worked in applications in biomedical engineering, forestry, mining automation, and commercial aviation.

Prof Manchester has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and has served on organising and editorial committees for many international conferences including IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Robotics: Science and Systems, and Conference on Robot Learning.