Faculty

Alfredo Weitzenfeld

A middle-aged man with glasses wears a burgundy polo shirt and stands confidently with his arms crossed in a well-lit hallway, adorned with artwork and windows in the background.

Professor

ENB 314 | 813-974-4905

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Biography

Dr. Alfredo Weitzenfeld is a professor and the director of the USF Biorobotics Laboratory and a professor in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. He is also the director of the REU program at the Bellini College, and prior to that, he was the Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs at the Department of Computing Science. His main research interests are biologically inspired robotics, robotics learning, spatial cognition and computational neuroscience. His research has been funded by NSF and other domestic and international agencies. Dr. Weitzenfeld received his PhD in Computer Science and MS in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. He received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Dr. Weitzenfeld is the director of USF RoboBulls student organization, a member of the Internal Advisory Board of the RoboCup Federation and Executive Advisory Board of the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems. He is a founding member of the Latin American Robotics Council (LARC) and the Latin American Robotics Symposium (LARS). He is the steering committee chair for the Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics (FCRAR) and was the chair of FCRAR 2023 held in Tampa, Florida. He was the co-chair of RoboCup 2012 world championship in Mexico City, and chair of the International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2013) in Montevideo, Uruguay. He has authored two books: "The Neural Simulation Language NSL: A System for Brain Modeling," co-authored with M. Arbib and A. Alexander, published in 2002 by MIT Press; and "Object Oriented Software Engineering with UML, Java and Internet," published in 2004 by Cengage Learning in Spanish. His main research interests are in biologically-inspired robotics, neurorobotics, neural networks, cognitive robotics, multi-robot systems, swarm robotics, human-robotics interaction, computational neuroscience, brain modeling, spatial cognition, and learning systems. His research has been funded by NSF and other national and international agencies. He has published over 150 journal and conference papers.

Research Interests

  • Biologically inspired robotics
  • Neurorobotics and neural networks
  • Cognitive robotics
  • Multi-robot systems and swarm robotics
  • Human-robot interaction
  • Computational neuroscience and brain modeling
  • Spatial cognition
  • Learning systems
  • Computational neuroscience

Teaching Interests

  • Autonomous mobile robots
  • Biologically inspired robotics
  • Neural systems

Education

  • Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Southern California, 1992
  • M.S., Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, 1985
  • B.S., Electrical Engineering, Technion, 1982

Honors and Awards

  • IEEE-RAS Distinguished Lecturer (2007-2010)
  • IEEE Senior Member

Key Activities

  • Director, USF BioRobotics Laboratory
  • Advisor, USF RoboBulls
  • Member Executive Advisory Board, Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
  • Member Executive Advisory Board, IEEE-RAS Latin American Robotics Council
  • Member Internal Advisory Council, RoboCup Federation
  • Member Internal Advisory Board, Mexican Robotics Federation
  • Director, Neural Simulation Language (NSL) Project