Dionis Totsila
Education
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Computer Science
University of Lorraine, IAEM-Lorraine Doctoral School
Thesis: Bidirectional Language-to-Action for Whole-Body Humanoid Control via Foundation Models. Expected defense: December 18, 2026. Supervisors: Dr. Serena Ivaldi, Dr. Jean-Baptiste Mouret.
Integrated Master's (MEng), Computer Engineering and Informatics
Thesis: Stable Continuous Control, using Dynamical System-Based Policies (Grade: 10/10). Supervisor: Dr. Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis. Final grade: 7.74/10.
Employment History
Doctoral Researcher
Inria, Human Centered Robotics Team (HUCEBOT)
Vision-language models (VLMs), large language models (LLMs), teleoperation, and whole-body control for humanoid robots. Funded by the EU Horizon project euROBIN.
Robotics Engineer (Contractor)
Whole-body control, Model Predictive Control (MPC), robot dynamics (Pinocchio, RBDyn), and simulation (MuJoCo, PhysX), improving animator workflows in Maya.
Software Engineer (Freelance)
Self-employed
Developed a full-stack medical data analysis tool for processing NIRS data using vascular occlusion techniques, including algorithms to automatically detect ischemia and calculate oxygen consumption and reperfusion rates.
Student Researcher
AI Group, Laboratory of Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence, University of Patras
Neural Dynamic Policies for learning from demonstration and reinforcement learning, plus research in exploration strategies and optimal control techniques.
Service & Outreach
Project Demo Lead — euROBIN, European Parliament
Brussels
Led the Inria team (5 people) for the final euROBIN project demonstration, coordinating system integration and personally developing the manipulation algorithms.
Workshop Lead Organizer — IEEE-RAS Humanoids
Seoul
Organized the Bridging Humanoid Robotics and Foundation Models workshop, curating talks from academic and industry experts (Google DeepMind, NVIDIA) on VLAs, LLMs, and embodied AI.
Tutorial Chair & Lecturer — AIxHRI Summer School
Nancy
Led an engineering team building plug-and-play Docker environments for all tutorials. Lectured on Vision-Language Models in HRI and taught a hands-on class deploying a local, open-source VLM/LLM/TTS/STT stack on a Reachy Mini robot.
Open Source Development
Hucebot Team ROS2 packages
Developed and maintain vlm_ros2, fast_whisper_ros2, pocket_tts_ros2, tiago_wbc_ros2, vive_controller, and orbbec_ros2. Contributor to robot_dart.
Peer Reviewer
IROS · ICRA · RA-L · NeurIPS · ICML
Student Supervision
Max von Boxberg
MSc Thesis, University College London
Video Generation Models as Generalist Backbones for Flow Matching Policies
Man Kai Yui
MSc Thesis, University College London
Force-Informed Flow Matching Policies for Contact-Rich Robotic Control
Jean-Pierre Axel Gninahophin
M1 Intern, Aix-Marseille University
Quality-Diversity Algorithms for Synthetic Data Generation in Wake-Word Detection
Volunteering
Assistant Cubmaster
World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM)
Led and mentored young Scouts, organizing activities, trips, and service projects. Taught leadership, teamwork, and outdoor skills.
Conference Local Organization
IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2024 & the 1st euROBIN Service Robots Coopetition
Supported logistics, coordination, and attendee services before and during both events.