Maria-Paola Forte

Maria-Paola Forte received her BSc in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Genova (2015) and her MSc in Bioengineering from Politecnico di Milano (2018), including an exchange at the University of Queensland. She completed her Ph.D. in 2025 as an IMPRS-IS Candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, working across the Haptic Intelligence Department (Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker) and the Perceiving Systems Department (Dr. Michael J. Black). She then continued as a postdoctoral researcher across both departments. Currently, Forte is a guest scientist in the Haptic Intelligence Department at MPI-IS, working on a bioimpedance sensor that detects self-touch. Her broader research interests focus on developing assistive technology for people with sensory or motor deficits by combining vision-based and sensor-based approaches, spanning sign language capture, robotic surgery applications, and bioimpedance sensing, with ongoing commercialization efforts.