UofL has hired Dr. Jean Vaz with the help of KY NSF EPSCoR funding, scheduled to begin as an Assistant Professor on July 1, 2023.   Vaz is joining the list of faculty members sharing laboratory facilities at UofL’s robotics institute (LARRI) and will bring unique research expertise in telepresence and multi-legged robotic locomotion. 

Dr. Jean Chagas Vaz was formerly a research scientist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, working with several robots for nearly a decade. Dr. Vaz was the team captain and lead engineer of team Avatar-Hubo during the ANA Avatar XPRIZE Semi- Finals (Miami 2022) and Final (Long Beach 2023). His main research focus lies on enhancing cyber physical systems overall locomotion, manipulation, haptics, and telepresence skills. Over the past years, Dr. Vaz has published several articles that tackle critical gaps in the current state-of-the-art robot telepresence material handling
research area. Please welcome Dr. Vaz to the KAMPERS team! Below is a short video produced by UNLV featuring Dr. Vaz.