Senior Research Technologist
Implementation, Technology & Robotics
RIMAR Department - Research Infrastructures for Marine Biological Resources
Coordinator of the Permanent Technical Structure supporting the SZN Performance Cycle
Coordinator of the Permanent Working Group for drafting the SZN Three-Year Activity Plan
Coordinator of the Technical Committee for the management of the SZN drone fleet (UAS)
Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
Villa Comunale
80121 Napoli - Italia
Tel.: +39 081 5833224
Cell: +39 340 7207845
E-mail: fabrizio.vecchi szn.it
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8546-0246
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabrizio-vecchi-7b7301a/
Research interests
Electronics engineer (Biomedical Engineering track) and Ph.D. in Robotics (University of Genoa, in agreement with the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa), Vecchi built his scientific and managerial career at the Sant'Anna BioRobotics Institute, where for over a decade he managed international projects on wearable biomechatronic systems, exoskeletons, and neural prostheses, contributing to establishing biorobotics as a frontier discipline between engineering and the life sciences.
His current scientific interests focus on applying the principles of biorobotics to marine environments: developing bio-inspired robotic systems for ocean exploration, monitoring, and sample collection, with particular attention to the design of underwater systems, manipulators, and grippers inspired by the biomechanics of marine organisms. In this field, he has published studies in international indexed journals on bio-inspired actuators and manipulation systems for sample collection in deep-sea environments.
A distinctive strand of his research concerns the technological synergies between sea exploration and space exploration - the "Space&Blue" interaction - investigating how technologies and methodologies developed for the space environment can be transferred to oceanographic research, and vice versa, in a perspective of convergence between these two extreme environments.
Vecchi combines applied research expertise with extensive managerial experience in public research institutions, previously serving as Director General of the SZN (2017–2022) and of CIRA (Italian Aerospace Research Centre) (2022–2025).
Main Publications
• Silvia Filogna, Linda Paternò, Fabrizio Vecchi, Luigi Musco, Veronica Iacovacci, Arianna Menciassi, “A Bioinspired Fluid-Filled Soft Linear Actuator”, Soft Robotics, 2023 (DOI: 10.1089/soro.2021.0091)
• Angela Mazzeo, Jacopo Aguzzi, Marcello Calisti, Simonepietro Canese, Michela Angiolillo, A Louise Allcock, Fabrizio Vecchi, Sergio Stefanni, Marco Controzzi, “Marine Robotics for Deep-Sea Specimen Collection: A Taxonomy of Underwater Manipulative Actions”, Sensors, 22(4), 2022 (https://doi.org/10.3390/s22041471).
• Jacopo Aguzzi, Sascha Flögel, Simone Marini, Laurenz Thomsen, Jan Albiez, Peter Weiss, Giacomo Picardi, Marcello Calisti, Sergio Stefanni, Luca Mirimin, Fabrizio Vecchi, Cecilia Laschi, Andrew Branch, Evan B Clark, Bernard Foing, Armin Wedler, Damianos Chatzievangelou, Michael Tangherlini, Autun Purser, Lewis Dartnell, Roberto Danovaro, “Developing technological synergies between deep-sea and space research”, Elem Sci Anth, 10: 1. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00064, 2022.
• Angela Mazzeo, Jacopo Aguzzi, Marcello Calisti, Simonepietro Canese, Fabrizio Vecchi, Sergio Stefanni, Marco Controzzi, “Marine Robotics for Deep-Sea Specimen Collection: A Systematic Review of Underwater Grippers”, Sensors, 22(1), 2022 (https://doi.org/10.3390/s22020648).
• Jacopo Aguzzi, Corrado Costa, Marcello Calisti, Valerio Funari, Sergio Stefanni, Roberto Danovaro, Helena I Gomes, Fabrizio Vecchi, Lewis R Dartnell, Peter Weiss, Kathrin Nowak, Damianos Chatzievangelou, Simone Marini, “Research trends and future perspectives in marine biomimicking robotics”,Sensors, 21(11), 2021 (https://doi.org/10.3390/s21113778).
• Silvia Filogna, Veronica Iacovacci, Fabrizio Vecchi, Luigi Musco, Arianna Menciassi, “Protrusion mechanism study in sipunculid worms as model for developing bio-inspired linear actuators”, Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 16(2), 2021 (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/abc671).
