Professor Stokes is Chair of Bioinspired Engineering at The University of Edinburgh. He is a multidisciplinary scientist and engineer with a focus on commercialisation and entrepreneurship.

Maks graduated with an MEng degree in Electrical & Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh in 2021. Before that, he spent 7 months working as an automation engineer in Formula 1 and worked on his own startup projects. Maks’ master’s thesis focused on leveraging fluidics to allow for long-duration robotic operation under extreme conditions on the surface of the planet Venus.

In his ongoing PhD work, Maks is researching how fluid flow phenomena can be exploited as a form of embodied intelligence that allows to create new types of soft robots, called FlowBots. Taking inspiration from nature, FlowBots are a new generation of soft robots that exploit the characteristics of fluid flow for analogue control, sensing, as well as actuation. FlowBots can be additively manufactured as monolithic, robust parts. This approach not only saves size and mass, but also enables rapid prototyping, greater sustainability, and an expansive range of potential applications in areas such as wildlife monitoring, or nuclear decommissioning.