Utku Culha has received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bilkent University, Türkiye from the Computer Engineering Department. He started his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland and then moved to the University of Cambridge, UK to help establish the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory. After completing his Ph.D. in the design and control of physically adaptive soft robots, he joined the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. Combining fellowships from the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he worked on the control of small scale soft robots, statistical machine learning on physical systems, and the control of self-assembling robotic elements. He joined the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) as the Chief of Science in April 2021. Here, Utku coordinated the joint research efforts of multiple departments and research laboratories on the human-centered robotics and machine intelligence for the future of work, health, mobility, and environment. He managed more than 30 national and internationally funded robotics research projects. In April 2024, he joined Learning Systems and Robotics Lab of TUM as a Senior Researcher and a project manager to develop robotic grippers for agricultural automation. Since 2025, Utku is working as an Applications Programming Engineer at Raith GmbH, developing intelligent process automation algorithms and AI tools for nanofabrication systems and characterization technologies.
