Inaugural Lecture: Professor Mehmet Dogar, School of Computer Science

Join us on 12 May for the upcoming Inaugural Lecture of Mehmet Dogar, Professor of Robotics and AI at the School of Computer Science.

An inaugural lecture is a significant milestone in any academic’s career, recognising their promotion to Professor. It also offers an opportunity for our new professorial colleagues to showcase their work and innovative research with a broad audience, including members of the public, family, friends, and colleagues. 

This lecture is part of a Faculty-wide series that celebrates those who have joined the University to offer ever greater teaching, research, and expertise across our eight Schools. 

About this lecture 

In his inaugural lecture, “Robotic manipulation: Enabling robots to act in the real world”, Professor Dogar will explore how advanced robotic manipulation is enabling robots to perform complex real‑world tasks, such as pushing, folding, and packing, opening the way for a new generation of capable and versatile robotic systems. 

At its heart, robotic manipulation is about giving robots the ability to handle objects intelligently. This is what ultimately allows robots to take on everyday physical tasks in our homes, hospitals, and workplaces. 

Today, most robot applications focus on a simple action: picking something up and putting it down somewhere else. Humans do far more than that: slide objects across a table, nudge them into place, fold them, squeeze them, pack them tightly, and improvise in countless small ways without even noticing. For robots to reach anything close to this level of versatility, they need a deeper understanding of how the physical world works. 

Professor Dogar will highlight several big questions: How can a robot learn the physics of the objects around it? How should it deal with uncertainty, such as when it can’t quite see or feel everything perfectly? How can it plan its next move when every action changes the world a little? And what kinds of perception does it need to make good decisions? 

He will also share his research, which tackles these challenges and discusses how the rise of generative AI is opening new possibilities for the future of robotic manipulation. 

About our speaker 

Mehmet Dogar is a Professor of Robotics and AI at the School of Computer Science. His research focuses on planning, control, and learning for robotic object manipulation. He is an EPSRC Fellow, Associate Editor for the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), and for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.  

He joined Leeds in 2015 and was a Visiting Professor at ETH Zurich in 2023. Before Leeds, he was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT (2013 to 2015) and received his PhD from the Carnegie Mellon University (2008 to 2013). 

Book your place 

The lecture will take place in the Electrical Engineering Building at the University of Leeds, with arrival and registration from 3:45pm in the foyer, and the lecture commencing at 4:00pm in the Rhodes Lecture Theatre (G.55). This will be followed by a drinks reception in the Sir William Henry Bragg Building’s atrium at 5:00pm. 

Booking is required to attend this event – you can do so at our dedicated ticket portal. Please book by Friday 8 May. 

If you have any questions please contact the EPS CPD, Conference and Events team via cpd@engineering.leeds.ac.uk.