Christian Cipriani is a Professor of Bioengineering (since Dec 2016) and and Head of the Artificial Hands Area at the BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, where he also serves as the Deputy Director (2014-2017). He was born in Lucca, Italy, on October 22, 1980. He received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering (MSc) with full marks from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy in 2004 and the Ph.D. in Biorobotics Science and Engineering from a joint program between IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa in 2008. The PhD thesis was entitled: “Control Developments for prosthetic and cybernetic hands”, supervised by Dr. M. C. Carrozza. During 2008 he has been a visiting student at Lund University, Lund, Sweden. In 2009 he founded Prensilia S.r.l., a spin-off company of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna that develops and commercializes robotic hands. From January 2011 to April 2014 he was an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the BioRobotics Institute of SSSA; from May 2014 to December 2016 he was an Associate Professor of Bioengineering, at the same Institute. In 2012 he has been a Visiting Scientist with the Biomechatronics Development Lab directed by Dr. R. Weir at University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus, with a Fulbright Scholarship.
He has been working at ARTS Lab since 2005 in the framework of many national and international research projects on upper limb prosthetics and robotic hands under the supervision of Dr. M. C. Carrozza. In particular, he has collaborated as Research Engineer in the IST FET CYBERHAND Project, the Revolutionizing Prosthetic Program 2007, the IST ROBOTCUB, and the IST FET NEUROBOTICS projects. Lately he has been the SSSA Team Leader for SAFFEHAND (2007-2008: PRIN 2006 national project), SMARTHAND (2006-2010: EU, NMP programme) and NANOBIOTOUCH (during 2010: EU, NMP) and the Project Manager of OPENHAND (2010-2012: PRIN 2008) projects. Recently he was the Coordinator and PI of the FIRB 2010 (early career grant) MY-HAND Project funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (2012-2015), of the WAY Project (Wearable interfaces for hAnd function recovery – EU-FP7-ICT-288551) funded by the European Commission (2011-2015) and of the PPR3 Project funded by the Italian Workers’ Compensation (INAIL).
Today he is the Coordinator/PI of three large national/international research projects on upper limb prosthetics: an ERC Starting Grant (#679820), dubbed MYKI, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), the DeTOP Project (H2020-ICT-687905) funded by the European Commission (2011-2015) and of the PPR3 Project funded by the Italian Workers’ Compensation (INAIL).