University of Freiburg
Agricultural environments are intrinsically heterogeneous, dynamic, and biologically active, posing major challenges for sensing, intervention, and control. Among living organisms, plants offer a powerful yet underexploited source of strategies to operate under such conditions, having evolved distributed, adaptive solutions across terrestrial and aquatic habitats over millions of years.
In this keynote, we present how functional principles from plant biology can be leveraged to develop plant-inspired and biohybrid microfabricated systems tailored for smart and sustainable agriculture. Rather than treating plants solely as sources of inspiration, we adopt a bidirectional approach, in which engineering plant-inspired systems also serves as an experimental tool to probe plant-environment interactions.
We introduce a new class of miniaturized, multifunctional machines designed for in situ environmental sensing, localized actuation, and targeted delivery in confined and unstructured agricultural settings. These systems combine bioinspired design with biohybrid approaches, integrating morphological and biomechanical features derived from both terrestrial and aquatic plants. Using advanced fabrication techniques, including microcomputed tomography, two-photon lithography, and bioprinting, we realize scalable and sustainable prototypes capable of operating in real environments. When deployed in soil, leaf tissues, and aquatic contexts, these systems exhibit plant-like strategies for attachment, motion, and interaction with natural substrates.
Overall, we demonstrate how plant-inspired biohybrid technologies can contribute to adaptive agricultural systems, while simultaneously providing a complementary experimental platform to investigate functional plant traits and ecosystem-relevant interactions, with implications for precision farming, agroecology, and environmental sustainability.
Dr. Isabella Fiorello is a Junior Group Leader at the Cluster of Excellence Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS) of the University of Freiburg, leading the Biohybrid Machines group. Since October 2023, she has been a Fulbright Scholar at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California). She received a Master’s Degree in Industrial Biotechnology (with honors) from the University of Turin (Italy) in 2017 and a PhD in Biorobotics (with honors) from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) in 2021. From 2021 to 2023, she worked as Postdoc in the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory of Italian Institute of Technology (Genoa, Italy) in the group of Director Barbara Mazzolai. During her scientific career, she received prestigious grants and awards, such as Young Researcher of the Year – ENI Award 2022, Early Career National Geographic Grant and Fulbright Grant. Her research aims at the development of biologically-inspired microfabricated living materials able to precisely interact with complex unstructured surfaces for applications in precision agriculture, smart fabrics, space and soft robotics.
Sapienza Università di Roma
Daniele Nardi (http://www.diag.uniroma1.it/~nardi/) is full Professor (since 2000) at Sapienza Univ. Roma, Faculty of Information Engineering, Informatics, and Statistics, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering “A. Ruberti”, where he thaught Artificial Intelligence courses for about 20 years. In Sapienza University, he was chair of the curricula in Computer Engineering starting the Master degree in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (2009), chair of the PhD programme in Engineering in Computer Science and of the National PhD programme in Artificial Intelligence, and faculty vice-dean for International Relationships.
Daniele Nardi is the leader of the DIAG research lab “Artificial Intelligence and Robotics”. His research on AI and Robotics was supported by national and international grants in several application domains, most recently, Precision Agriculture. Daniele Nardi has a rich publication record in AI and Robotics, including several Best Paper awards. He is EurAI Fellow, former President of RoboCup Federation (2011-2014) and former Director of the Laboratory on Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems (AIIS) of National Consortium for Informatics (CINI) (2022-2024).
Gembloux AgroBio-Tech – Université e Liège
Under the impulse of the European Commission, a strategic framework for smart specialization (S3) has been established in Wallonia to promote the development of research and innovation. It is through this S3 strategy that the strategic innovation initiative Digibiocontrol uniquely mobilizes the competency of regional ecosystems in biocontrol and digital technologies to address issues hindering the widespread adoption of biocontrol solutions in agriculture. Indeed, in response to new societal expectations, regulatory evolution, and consideration of environmental challenges, stakeholders in the agricultural sector are increasingly turning to alternative solutions, including the use of biocontrol. However, the use of these products is still limited due to several associated constraints and the limited number of available products. In this talk we will show how, with the development of innovative digital solutions (decision support tools, sensors, robots, etc.), it could be possible to increase or speed up the development and use of innovative biosolutions . To end with, as a concrete example, we will introduce, the Interreg FWVL (France – Wallonia – Vlaanderen program), portfolio of projects, Biocontrol 4.0, that aims to have a significant impact on sustainable agriculture by reducing the use of chemical pesticides through the development of biocontrol solutions and the integration of advanced digital tools to help in the development and the use of the biocontrol products. It will improve crop yields while increasing research and innovation capacities through transborder collaboration between 43 partners. The organization of the portfolio will be presented with special focus on the interactions between the constitutive projects and the transborder plus value.
Philippe Jacques is Professor of Microbiology and Applied Microbiology at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech/University of Liège. He currently serves as President of the “Terra Teaching and Research Center”, the only Research Unit at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech. He is one of the two founders of the Lipofabrik company. He specializes in the study of secondary metabolites of microbial origin and their development as new biopesticides (180 publications and 8 patents). He is currently coordinator of the Interreg Biocontrol 4.0 European project portfolio (43 partners) and involved as a partner in 3 other European projects (Urbane, Adopt-IPM and SurfUps) linked to the development of biocontrol agents. He is co-coordinator with Dr Jean-Yves Parfait of Multitel of the Strategic Innovation Initiative named Digibiocontrol which aims to develop synergies between the fields of digital technology and biocontrol in agriculture.