Prof. dr. ir. Tom Verstraten received a master’s degree in electromechanical engineering and a doctorate from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in 2012 and 2018 respectively. In 2020, he became an assistant professor with the Robotics and Multibody Mechanics Research Group, VUB. He was awarded fellow- ships of the Research Foundation—Flanders for both his doctoral and postdoctoral research, as well as a Fulbright grant for visiting scholars for a research stay at the University of Tulsa from 2018–2019. He also worked in industry as an R&D Engineer with Aquasystems International, Halle, Belgium, from 2012–2013, and as a visiting researcher with Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2017. His main research interests include study and development of energy-efficient actuation systems for robotic prostheses, exoskeletons, and collaborative robots, and elastic actuators and redundant actuation.