Dr Rafael Papallas
Dr Rafael Papallas
Assistant Professor in Intelligent Robotics and AI
American University of Beirut (AUB) - Mediterraneo

Bio

I am an Assistant Professor at The American University of Beirut - Mediterraneo in Pafos, Cyprus. From 2021 until 2024, I was a Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of Leeds, UK. My research focuses on intelligent robotics and robotic object manipulation. I am interested in algorithmic problems, including motion planning, motion control and robot perception. You can watch videos here. Moreover, you can find more details about my research at the Intelligent Robotics & Interaction Lab website here. I am an HEA Fellow, and previously I taught Intelligent Robotics at the University of Leeds. I delivered three courses on Coursera with University of Leeds and Institute of Coding to over 18,000 students worldwide with 4.8/5 instructor rating on Coursera.

Employment

2025 – Today
Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, American University of Beirut - Mediterraneo
Pafos, Cyprus (On-Site)
2026 – Today
Visiting Professor
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Karlsruhe, Germany (On-Site)
2025 – Today
Visiting Professor
School of Computer Science, University of Leeds
Leeds, United Kingdom (Hybrid)

2021 – 2024
Research & Teaching Fellow
School of Computer Science, University of Leeds
Leeds, United Kingdom (On-Site)
2015 – 2016
Software Developer
ITI Group
Saltaire, United Kingdom (On-Site)

Education

2017 - 2021
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
School of Computer Science, University of Leeds
Leeds, United Kingdom
2013 - 2017
B.Sc (Hons) Computer Science (Industrial) - First Class Honours
School of Computer Science, University of Leeds
Leeds, United Kingdom

Awards & Funding

2026
LINK ($25,000), AUB / AUB Mediterraneo — Co-PI
2025
VISION ERC (€100,000), Research & Innovation Foundation, Cyprus — Principal Investigator
2025
ERC Visiting Research Fellowship (€31,140), Research & Innovation Foundation, Cyprus — Principal Investigator
2023
Alan Turing PDE Award (£2,000), The Alan Turing Institute
2017
Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), UKRI/EPSRC

Teaching

Click on each course to learn more.

Current Courses

2026 - Today
CSEN 406 Autonomous Systems and Robotics, AUB Mediterraneo (Campus)
2026 - Today
CSEN 401 Artificial Intelligence, AUB Mediterraneo (Campus)
2026 - Today
CSEN 214 Algorithms and Data Structures, AUB Mediterraneo (Campus)
2026 - Today
CSEN 201 Object-Oriented Programming, AUB Mediterraneo (Campus)

Coursera

2023 - Today
An Introduction to Programming using Python, University of Leeds (Coursera)
2023 - Today
How to Get Into Robotics, University of Leeds (Coursera)
2023 - Today
How to Get Into Cloud Computing, University of Leeds (Coursera)

Past Courses

American University of Beirut - Mediterraneo

2024-25

University of Leeds

Honours, Fellowships & Certifications

2023
HEA Fellowship (FHEA), AdvanceHE
2021
AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-02), Amazon Web Services
2020
HEA Associate Fellowship (AFHEA), AdvanceHE

Publications

Professional Leadership

2025 - Today
Lead Co-organizer of the Pafos Robotics Challenge, AUB Mediterraneo.
2025 - Today
Coordinator and member of the Research Committee, AUB Mediterraneo.
2025 - Today
Member of the AI Policy Committee, AUB Mediterraneo.
October 2023
Reviewer
ISER
International Symposium on Experimental Robotics
CASE
IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering
IJRR
The International Journal of Robotics Research
RSS
Robotics: Science and Systems
RA-L
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
ICRA
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
IROS
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
T-RO
IEEE Transactions on Robotics
ICAR
IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics
ISRR
International Symposium of Robotic Research
HRI
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction

Selected Open Source Projects

illustrate.nvim: a plugin for neovim that lets you quickly create, search and open vector files from within neovim. Lua Apache-2.0 ⭐ ...
nvim-tmux-commander: a plugin for neovim to manage and run commands in a tmux pane using keybindings. Lua Apache-2.0 ⭐ ...
ur5controller: OpenRAVE Controller Plugin for the UR5 robot. C++ / Python GPL-3.0 ⭐ ...
hugo_gdpr_embeds: Hugo shortcode for embedding YouTube videos with a warning/consent form. HTML / JavaScript MIT ⭐ ...
pi_camera_ros: ROS2 package for Raspberry Pi camera, publishing in a compressed format. Python Apache-2.0 ⭐ ...
CV last updated Apr 2026
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