Piotr Gierlak has a PhD in Mechanics, and is an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Mechanics and Robotics; he has worked at the Rzeszow University of Technology for more than 15 years. In 2011, he completed his PhD thesis, "Neural Control of Manipulator Motion". In 2019, he completed his habilitation thesis, "Synthesis of Robotic Manipulator Movement Including Environmental Interaction". He is the author or coauthor of over 50 publications. He is a Chairman of the Rzeszow Division of the Polish Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and a member of the Polish Committee of Theory of Machines and Mechanisms. He is involved in research on robot modeling, identification, control of robotic systems, nonlinear control, adaptive control, force control, neural networks and fuzzy logic in robotics, underactuated systems and mechanical vibration.