Curriculum vitae
Adnan Saood
Robotics engineer & researcher · PhD candidate
Mechatronics engineer and PhD candidate (IP Paris) who takes robots from sensors and embedded firmware to ROS 2 control and validated experiments with people. Medical-robotics patent licensed to Therasonic; first-author papers at ICRA, Humanoids and ICSR; open-source ROS 2 drivers.
Experience
- Apr 2024 — Present
Doctoral Candidate
Institut Polytechnique de Paris · ENSTA Paris
Researching socio-affective touch in robotics, focusing on haptics, tactility, signal processing, and real-time estimation.
- Socio-Affective Touch in Robotics
- Haptics
- Tactility
- Signal Processing
- Real time Estimation
- Dec 2024 — Present
Engineering Consultant
Therasonic - Spin-off company from CEA Neurospin
Contributing to medical robotics development and assisted drug delivery systems.
- Medical Robotics Development
- Assisted Drug Delivery
- Sep 2022 — Sep 2023
Research Engineer
Led a team focused on optimization-based Coverage Path Planning and designed/implemented a control pipeline for an industrial manipulator in medical procedures.
- Team Lead: Jonathan VAPPOU
- Optimization-based Coverage Path Planning
- Control pipeline design for industrial manipulator
- Mar 2022 — Aug 2022
Master's End-of-Studies Intern
Completed thesis on robotic assistance for Blood-Brain-Barrier opening using focused ultrasound.
- Thesis: Robotic Assistance for Blood-Brain-Barrier Opening Using Focused Ultrasound
- Supervisors: Jonathan VAPPOU, Florent NAGEOTTE
- Oct 2019 — Aug 2021
Robotics Club VP
Organized international and regional robotics competitions and provided training in embedded systems, C/C++ programming for robotics, and Matlab for robotics.
- International and regional robotics competitions
- Robotics training
- Teaching courses (Embedded systems, C/C++ Programming, Matlab)
- Nov 2017 — Oct 2019
Scientific Committee Member for Physics
- Sep 2021 — Jun 2022
Project Supervisor
National Center for the Distinguished
Supervised academic projects for distinguished students.
Education
- Sep 2021 — Sep 2022
M2 Masters in Engineering, Medical Robotics
University of Strasbourg · Strasbourg, France
- Grade: 14.43/20 - Mention Bien
- ITI HealthTech fellowship (Excellence Merit)
- Interdisciplinary Thematic Institute, Excellence Initiative Program
- Sep 2016 — Aug 2021
Engineer Diploma, Mechatronics
Tishreen University · Latakia, Syria
- Grade: 80.23/100 - Mention Tres Bien
- Distinction and Creativity Agency Scholarship (Excellence Merit)
- Full program description here
- Sep 2013 — Aug 2016
Baccalauréat, Science
National Center for the Distinguished · Damascus, Syria
- Grade: 99.94% Percentile
- Excellence Merit Scholarship
- Second rank in the entrance exams out of 3500+ applicants from the top 10% nationally.
Awards & honours
- 2021
Excellence Merit Fellowship of the Interdisciplinary Thematic Institute (HealthTech)
University of Strasbourg
Awarded for excellence in the Interdisciplinary Thematic Institute (HealthTech) program.
- 2019
First place at Annual Robotics Competition, Senior SUMO cat.
Syrian Computer Society
Achieved first place in the Senior SUMO category at the annual robotics competition.
- 2018
Best paper award at ICASSDA 2018
Received the best paper award at the International Conference on Advanced Science and Sustainable Development Applications.
- 2017
Second place at ULFG2 (regional robotics contest)
ULFG2
Secured second place in the ULFG2 regional robotics contest.
- 2015
Participant in the 46th International Physics Olympiad
International Physics Olympiad
Represented Syria in the prestigious International Physics Olympiad.
- 2014
National third rank, National Physics Olympiad
National Physics Olympiad
Achieved the third national rank in the National Physics Olympiad.
Skills
Mechatronics Expert
MATLAB/SIMULINK Expert
Technical Tools Proficient
CAD Proficient
Selected projects
- Jan 2025 — Present
hid_ros2: universal USB-HID hardware interface for ros2_control
Open-source ros2_control hardware interface that connects any USB-HID device to ROS 2 from a YAML file; presented at ROSCon FR 2025.
- ROS 2
- ros2_control
- C++
- USB-HID
- GitHub
- Jan 2025 — Present
paxini_ros2: ROS 2 driver for PaXini GEN3 tactile sensor arrays
ROS 2 / ros2_control driver for the PaXini GEN3 tactile sensor arrays: hardware interface, tactile broadcaster, URDF and a raw-data pipeline.
- ROS 2
- ros2_control
- C++
- Python
- tactile sensing
- GitHub
- Apr 2024 — Present
Tactile Array for Humanoid Hand to enable socio-affective touch
Design, manufacturing, and validation of a tactile array embedded in a soft silicone substrate for humanoid hands, part of my thesis research.
- Thesis Project
- Tactile sensor design
- Humanoid robotics
- Jan 2022 — Dec 2022
Robotic Assistance for Blood-Brain Barrier Opening using Focused Ultrasound
Designed and optimized robot path planning using ROS2 on Universal Robots UR5 for improving accuracy and precision in this promising breakthrough in brain medicine.
- ROS2
- Universal Robots UR5
- Path planning
- Medical robotics
- Jan 2022 — Dec 2022
ROS2 Driver for NDI medical-grade visual localization system using ros2-control
Developed drivers for `ros2_control` to facilitate communication with NDI localization systems, crucial for performance-critical applications.
- ROS2
- NDI localization systems
- Performance-critical applications
- GitHub
- Jan 2021 — Dec 2021
Design and Implementation of a SWARM motion planning algorithm based on fluid dynamics
Developed a novel motion planning algorithm for a swarm of non-holonomic robots based on the numerical solution of Navier-Stokes’s equations. Also created a swarm platform of 15 mobile robots.
- SWARM robotics
- Motion planning
- Fluid dynamics
- Navier-Stokes equations
- GitHub
- Jan 2020 — Dec 2020
COVID-19 Lung CT Image Segmentation using Deep Learning
Investigated and compared SegNet and U-NET deep learning techniques for semantic segmentation of COVID-19 infected tissue regions in CT lung images.
- Deep Learning
- Image Segmentation
- COVID-19
- U-NET
- SegNet
- GitHub
Languages
English
French
Arabic
Publications
- ICRA2026
Contributing Factors in Human-Robot Handshake: Compliance, Hand Grip, and Synchrony
2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) · 2026
- ICRA2025
"Oh! It's Fun Chatting with You!" A Humor-aware Social Robot Chat Framework
2025 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) · 2025
- ICSR2025
Diaphragmatic Breathing Guidance Using a Humanoid Robot with a Soft Robotic Haptic Interface for Anxiety Reduction
Social Robotics · 2025
- ICSR2025
Human Hand Shape and Grasping Behavior Estimation using a Humanoid Hand with a Tactile Interface
2025 17th International Conference on Social Robotics (ICSR) · 2025
- Humanoids2024
Designing a Haptic Interface for Enhanced Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interaction: Integrating Heart and Lung Emotional Feedback
2024 IEEE-RAS 23rd International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids) · 2024
- Patent2024
Focused Ultrasound Sonication with Mechanical and Electronic Steering along a Computed Trajectory
2024
- Conference2023
Design of Robotic Trajectories for Volumetric Ultrasound-induced Blood-Brain Barrier Permeabilization
International Symposium on Therapeutic Ultrasounds, Lyon, France, mai 2023 · 2023
- Conference2023
Implementation of a Volumetric Blood-Brain Barrier Permeabilization Robotic Platform
Computer and Robot-Assisted Surgery (CRAS), Paris, France, septembre 2023 · 2023
- Journal2021
COVID-19 lung CT image segmentation using deep learning methods: U-Net versus SegNet
BMC Medical Imaging · 2021
- ICASSDA2018
Two Proposed Indoor Multi-Cameras Positioning Systems Compared to Classical Geometry System
2018 International Conference on Computational Approach in Smart Systems Design and Applications (ICASSDA) · 2018