Rui P. Rocha (born 1973) is a tenured Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), University of Coimbra, and a permanent researcher at the Institute of Systems and Robotics – University of Coimbra. His research focuses on cooperative multi-robot systems with decentralized coordination and resilient autonomy, applied to service robotics, precision agriculture and forestry, environmental monitoring, disaster response, industry, and logistics, all aimed at enhancing human welfare and sustainability.
He has participated in several EU-funded R&D projects under FP6, FP7, and H2020 frameworks, serving as Principal Investigator in projects on urban search and rescue robotics, multi-robot patrolling of buildings, socially assistive robots, and robot swarms for aquatic resource monitoring and management. Dr. Rocha has authored approximately 100 publications indexed in Scopus, including journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. He is actively involved in the robotics research community, regularly serving as editor and reviewer for leading journals and conferences, and contributing to the organization of scientific events and thematic tracks in intelligent robotics.
He currently supervises 2 PhD candidates and several MSc students, and has previously advised 2 PhD theses and 38 MSc dissertations in his areas of expertise. His teaching portfolio includes courses on autonomous and cognitive robotic systems, industrial process automation, algorithms and data structures, software engineering, electronics, and digital systems and microprocessors.
He is a Senior Member of IEEE and an active member of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Multi-Robot Systems. He holds pre-Bologna degrees in Engineering, MSc, and PhD in ECE from the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto, earned in 1996, 1999, and 2006, respectively.
Before joining the University of Coimbra in 2000, he had begun his academic career as a junior teaching assistant at University of Minho, Department of Informatics, where he taught digital systems and microelectronics between Nov. 1998 and Feb. 2000. He began his career as an electrical engineer in the Automation and Robotics division of the EFACEC company, where he worked between Oct. 1996 and Jan. 2000 in the development of automated material handling devices based on automated guided vehicles, and participated in the design of such systems for important customers, such as Bank of China in Hong Kong and Repsol YPF refinery in Argentina.
Personal webpage: https://home.deec.uc.pt/~rprocha/
Research record: Scopus | Google Scholar | ORCID | Ciência ID
Open-source software repositories: GitHub
