INAUGURAL LECTURE
Do robots dream of construction sites?
Tuesday 8 September 2026
6.15pm – Introduction by Cyril Veillon
6.30pm – Lecture by Stefana Parascho, followed by a discussion with Aude Billard, moderated by Pier Vittorio Aureli
7.30pm – Opening doors and aperitive
To mark the opening of the exhibition Do Robots Dream of Construction Sites?, organised in collaboration with prof. Stefana Parascho, Director of the CRCL – Lab for Creative Computation at EPFL, we are delighted to welcome prof. Aude Billard, a physicist and pioneer in the fields of machine learning and human-robot interaction. She heads the LASA laboratory, the Laboratory for Algorithms and Learning Systems at EPFL.
What if robots didn’t replace us, but worked alongside us? Robots are capable of assembling, analysing, experimenting and learning from their mistakes. Could they take on construction work without replacing human labour? Research carried out by the CRCL – Lab for Creative Computation at EPFL explores a form of collaboration between humans and machines that departs from the traditional promise of automation. It opens the way to more inclusive building sites and non-standardised, more environmentally friendly architecture that goes beyond the mere logic of replacement and productivity.
BIOGRAPHIES
Aude Billard is full professor and head of the LASA laboratory at the School of Engineering at the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). She is a pioneer in the fields of machine learning and human-robot interactions. Aude Billard acts as the President-elect of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), after serving in several roles in the administrative and executive committees of IEEE RAS.
Aude Billard holds a B.Sc and M.Sc. in Physics from EPFL and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. A. B. is an IEEE Fellow and the recipient of the Intel Corporation Teaching award, the IEEE RAS Distinguished Award, and IEEE-RAS Best Reviewer Award, the Swiss National Science Foundation career award and the Outstanding Young Person in Science and Innovation from the Swiss Chamber of Commerce.
Stefana Parascho is a researcher, architect, and educator whose work lies at the intersection of architecture, robotics and computational design. She is currently an Assistant Professor at EPFL where she founded the Lab for Creative Computation (CRCL). Through her research, she has explored multi-agent design and fabrication methods, and their potential for architecture. Her current work focuses on human-robot collaborative processes and the relationship between digital tools and the built environment. The work proposes adaptive construction processes in which humans and machines communicate, interact, and jointly build full-scale structures, while addressing the current prevailing challenges of the construction field. Applications include scaffold-free construction of spanning structures, reconfiguration of existing buildings and autonomous robotic construction with found materials. Her goal is to strengthen the interdisciplinary nature of the field by increasing accessibility of digital tools and connecting robotics research with societal aspects.
Before joining EPFL, Stefana was an Assistant Professor at Princeton University, where she led the CREATE Lab Princeton. She completed her doctorate in 2019 at ETH Zurich and received her Diploma in Architectural Engineering from the University of Stuttgart.
