Dr. Ekta Singla

Biography

Ekta Singla, an assistance professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT Ropar, is a Recipient of National award – Sheela Baya award 2016 – from Institute of Engineers. She had also received National Doctoral Fellowship (AICTE) during her PhD from IIT Kanpur, and Institute Gold medal during her Masters in Thapar University, Patiala, which has shown consistency in her hardwork and contributions. Her current research interests inclined towards the advanced directions of Modular robotics and Hybrid manipulators. Just before joining IIT Ropar, Dr Ekta had experienced working in two international groups in Europe – in the area of Rehabilitation Robotics and Evolutionary Robotics. Her contribution is visible through completed projects, various journal articles and international conference publications. She is also serving as Associate editor at reputed journals and contributing for various societies. At IIT Ropar, she has actively taken up the administrative responsibility at various levels related to student affairs, academic affairs and chairing the event organizations. Recently, Dr Ekta has initiated a move to assist in uplifting the interdisciplinary field of Robotics, within the institute and around. She establishes a collaboration, called PUNJRobotics, among 9 faculty members of IIT Ropar and many from other nearby institutes towards the establishment of a common platform for Robotics. The proposal had been produced to focus on academic, professional and innovation-related activities in robotics building on faculty strengths, linkages to regional, national, and international activities so that impact in this area is maximized. A central issue in all the planned activities is robot modularity which is widely considered as the vital enabling technology for advancing robotics in the wide range of applications which are emerging globally. To proceed towards the aim, two PUNJRobotics workshops and two GIAN courses had been conducted at IIT Ropar in a span of one year. Apart from national collaborations, Dr Ekta has maintained international working groups through two UK-India collaborations and one association with the university of Stony-brook, NY. To enhance the training and research oriented environment of Industrial Robotics field, she has recently got signed an MOU between IIT Ropar and TAL (TATA Automation Ltd) for establishing a research lab and training centre at IIT Ropar. She has successfully progressing towards establishing more industrial collaborations, with HiTech Robotics Ltd, Advanced Technology Chandigarh and Twastrix, Pune. 

Research Interest

Assistive devices - Task-based design, motion planning; Service robots, Modular manipulators, Hybrid manipulators Unified approaches for Optimal synthesis, Performance analysis