John-John Cabibihan
Twenty years of building machines that touch people and keep them company: artificial skin, prosthetic hands for war-wounded children, and social robots for children with autism.
Scroll to take the hand apart
It started with a fingertip.
The PhD in Pisa asked which synthetic materials feel most like a human fingertip, testing compliance, conformance and hysteresis against real skin. At NUS that became a prosthetic hand that is warm and soft, and blindfolded volunteers rated its touch close to a human hand.
Then sensors went under the skin.
Sensors under the skin read shape through artificial ridges, warn a surgical grasper when it squeezes too hard, and let a robot hand catch an object as it starts to slip.
Then the hand went to work.
At Qatar University the same hand became parametric, 3D printed prostheses for children wounded in war, and the touch research fed social robots for children with autism that stay safe even when thrown during a meltdown. The book Humanizing Artificial Touch: Skin, Sensing, and Structures (Elsevier, 2026) covers all three stages.
Nine lines of work
Each line of research has a chapter page with 3D scenes and published data, and each page can be shown at a talk without the rest. The atlas below plots every paper by line and year.
Humanizing artificial touch
Fingertip skins, ridges and a warm, soft hand that people rated close to a human one.
Social robots for autism
Robots as therapy partners, made safe to throw and able to sense a meltdown coming.
Gestures and social interaction
Pointing, waving, persuading and shaking hands: what people read into robot motion.
Prosthetic hands for war-wounded children
Patient-specific, 3D printed and parametric hands, from scan to fitted child.
Tactile sensing for surgery and grasping
Sensing graspers, capsule endoscopes and robot hands that catch a slip.
Robotic construction and architected materials
Robot-printed concrete, Voronoi honeycombs and crush-tested structures.
Smart materials, sensing and energy
Glucose and breath sensors, shape memory alloys and sun-tracking solar cells.
Ride comfort and mobility
From a 2013 smartphone study of standing passengers to the Lusail tram.
Rehabilitation, VR and hydrotherapy
VR training for amputees and HYDROTHERABOTS for aquatic therapy.
169 indexed works, 2006 to 2026
Each dot is one paper, sized by citations on Crossref. Filled dots are Qatar University work; outlined dots come from Pisa and NUS.
Every indexed paper
From Crossref, so a few items in the CV that have no DOI are missing here.
2026
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
Career, funding and inventions
As of October 2026. Qatar University work is shown in burgundy, earlier work in neutral gray.
Career
Research funding by year
Each grant spread evenly over the years it ran. Hover a year for its projects.
29 funded projects since 2008, 20 of them as lead, co-lead or sole investigator.
Largest grants
- 1.18MSocial Robots (2007 to 2012)
- 1.04MIntegrated Bio-Sensors and Automated Instrumentation for Early Stomach Cancer Detection Using Flexible Capsule Endoscope (2012 to 2016)
- 1.02MDevelopment of Smart Minimum Invasive Surgery Tools with Tactile Sensing Capabilities for Telerobot Surgery System (2012 to 2016)
- 0.82MNeuromorphic Tactile Sensing (2015 to 2018)
- 0.75MHYDROTHERABOTS (2025 to 2026)
Granted US patents How they work
- 2026Telepresence control schemes for hazardous environments
US 12,669,817 B2 · Qatar Foundation - 2026Automated multi-layer two-dimensional printing
US 12,576,592 B2 · Qatar Foundation and Qatar University - 2025Device for detecting challenging behavior in people with autism
US 12,383,161 B2 - 2025Fast-ejection safety systems for hotwire cutters
US 12,233,500 B2 · Qatar Foundation and Qatar University - 2024Tactile sensor, a surgical instrument having the same, and a method of manufacturing the same
US 12,109,000 B2 · Qatar Foundation and Qatar University - 2022Multifunctional tooling apparatus with non-anthropomorphic construction
US 11,229,534 B2 - 2020Biometrics liveness detection through biocompatible capacitive sensor
US 10,810,405 B2 - 2020Smart robotic therapeutic learning toy
US 10,792,581 B2
Selected awards
- 2026Innovation Award, Qatar University
- 2025Golden Jubilee Honorary Professor, De La Salle University
- 2024ICSR Robot Design Competition jury special mention, Parametric Artificial Hand
- 2021Distinguished Scientist, Qatar University
- 2020Top 2% of researchers worldwide, Standardized Citation Metrics (2020 to present)
- 2014IEEE Senior Member
- 2012Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Welfare Foundation Research Award
- 1998WIPO Gold Medal for Outstanding Invention, Geneva
Education
- 2007PhD in Bioengineering, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa (100/100)
- 2002MS Manufacturing Engineering, De La Salle University (high distinction)
- 1998BS Manufacturing Engineering and Management, De La Salle University