Serena Ivaldi is a tenured research scientist at Inria, leading the humanoid and human-robot interaction activities of the Team Larsen in Inria Nancy, France. She obtained her Ph.D. in Humanoid Technologies in 2011 at the Italian Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Inria, she was post-doctoral researcher in UPMC in Paris, France, then at the University of Darmstadt, Germany. She has been co-coordinator and PI of several collaborative projects, such as the EU projects CoDyCo (FP7) and AnDy (H2020), concerting the development of advanced anticipatory control and interaction skills for humanoid robots and exoskeletons. She has been developing whole-body tele-operation for the iCub humanoid robot and recently pioneered the use of exoskeletons in the ICU to physically assist physicians.

She was Program Chair of the conference IEEE/RAS Humanoids 2019. She is co-leader of the Humanoid Robotics Group of GDR Robotique (the French Robotics society). She was recently awarded the Suzanne Zivi Prize for excellence in research.