POSTED: 03 Feb, 2026

We’re pleased to launch our Research in Focus series, featuring the contributions of our Postdoctoral and PhD researchers and the value their work is delivering to Australian manufacturing. As many of our researchers move into the final stages of their projects, this series highlights the outcomes of their work and what comes next.

Our first video features Jagannatha Charjee Pyaraka from Swinburne University of Technology. Jagan started his PhD with the Australian Cobotics Centre in July 2022 as part of the Biomimic Cobots Program and is due to submit his PhD thesis in the coming months.

Jagan’s PhD focuses on developing lightweight learning‑from‑demonstration frameworks, enabling collaborative robots to learn manipulation tasks directly from human demonstrations, even when data and compute resources are limited. His project also included industry placements with Workr and InfraBuild, applying robotics and machine‑learning techniques to real industrial challenges.

Supervisory team:

• Professor Mats Isaksson (Principal Supervisor)
• Professor John McCormick
• Dr Sheila Sutjipto (University of Technology Sydney)

Across his candidature, Jagan has contributed to a broad range of Centre activities, including:

• A peer‑reviewed journal publication in Electronics MDPI (2025) on interaction recognition for robot learning
• Demonstrations at Australian Manufacturing Week (2023)
• Supporting Swinburne’s Industry 4.0 workshops across regional Victoria, delivered through the Victorian Government’s Digital Jobs for Manufacturing (DJIM) program
• Hands‑on engagement with humanoid and collaborative robot platforms in both research and industry settings

To learn more about Jagan’s background, publications, and projects, you can read his profile here:

Jagannatha Pyaraka