Sophie Armanini

Dr Sophie F. Armanini is an Associate Professor in Aerial Robotics at the Department of Aeronautics. Her research focuses on flight dynamics, system identification and control, especially for unconventional and small-scale unmanned air vehicles -- with the goal of enabling improved performance, higher efficiency and novel applications. She is particularly interested in flapping-wing flight and bioinspired robots.

Before joining Imperial in 2024, Dr Armanini was an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Munich from 2020 to 2024, where she headed the eAviation Professorship. From 2018 to 2020, she held a Research Associate position at Imperial College London (Aerial Robotics Laboratory), where she worked on dynamics and control of aerial-aquatic robots. She has also been a visiting researcher at Cornell University, Cranfield University, and AOS Group (Melbourne, Australia).

Dr Armanini holds an MSc in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Munich (Flight System Dynamics Institute), and a PhD in aerospace engineering from Delft University of Technology (Control & Simulation Section / MAVLab). Her doctoral research focused on modelling the nonlinear time-varying flight dynamics of flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles.