The SOFA Week is designed to gather the entire SOFA community, to present technological and scientific advances, while fostering the networking within the community. Previous occurrences made it as the most popular even within the community. Check out the previous 2024 edition. This year, we are back onsite with live demos!
24-28th November
Onsite in Lille & possible online access
24th Nov 2025: Training session
Two parallel training courses will be proposed to open SOFA Week. On the one hand, an introductory course to SOFA, providing interested participants with a hands-on introduction to the fundamentals of SOFA, the community and the theoretical foundations of simulation. On the other hand, an advanced course on soft-robotics, with theoretical explanations on robotics with soft bodies and a practical part for building your first simulation.
25th Nov 2025: International SOFA Symposium (free)
The symposium focuses on research and scientific achievements based on SOFA. This symposium allows international researchers from the SOFA community to present their scientific work, their plugins and propose live demonstrations. It is also the annual meeting where companies using SOFA can demonstrate their latest products. Finally, it is the opportunity to meet the community and create strong collaborations.
26-28th Nov 2025: Technical committee (free)
This committee focuses on technical discussions on current and future developments in SOFA. With developers of the community and SOFA Technical Members, the technical roadmap for the next release is jointly designed. It is also a unique opportunity to meet the developer community and code all together.
Day: 24th November 2025
Location: ESPRIT building, avenue Paul Langevin, Villeneuve-d’Ascq → Find your way
Level: Beginner – Medium (max 8 participants)
Registration costs
- early bird: 500€ excl.tax. (before the 10th October 2025)
- regular fare: 650€ excl. tax.
Introduction course
This training session aims at providing a wide introduction to SOFA and its community while ensuring the mathematical, physical and computer science backgrounds in order to start in the best conditions with SOFA.
| Time (CET) | Training steps |
|---|---|
| 9 am | Overview of SOFA and its community |
| 10 am | Coffee – for a good start! |
| 10:30 am | Examples of applications with SOFA |
| 11 am | User Tutorial (part 1) |
| noon | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm | User Tutorial (part 2) – involving SofaPython3 |
| 3 pm | Coffee break |
| 3:30 pm | Understand physics with SOFA: from the math to the code |
| 5:00 pm | Questions & Closing of the training |
Soft-robotics course
Requiring mastery of the basics introduced in the introduction course, this advanced session allows to understand the theory of soft-robotics and it offers the opportunity to build soft-robotics simulations.
| Time (CET) | Training steps |
|---|---|
| 10 am | Basis on time integration in SOFA |
| 10:30 am | Soft robots: actuators |
| noon | Lunch |
| 1:30 pm | Soft robots: kinematic jacobian |
| 2:30 pm | Soft robots: inverse kinematics |
| 4:00 pm | Questions & Closing of the training |
These trainings are supported by
Day: 25th November 2025
Location: ESPRIT building, avenue Paul Langevin, Villeneuve-d’Ascq → Find your way
Researchers and companies from the SOFA community join the Symposium in order to share ideas, experiences and to present their on-going research or products based on SOFA. Several sessions of presentations will be organized regarding various simulation topics and application fields. Booths will also be made available for technology demonstrations.
Call for presentations
To present your work at the SOFA Symposium, all you need is to mention your interest in presenting your work at the symposium, to share a (non-definitive) title for the pre-program and to write a short abstract (no more than 200 words) upon registration.
Day: 26-28th, November 2025
Location: ESPRIT building, avenue Paul Langevin, Villeneuve-d’Ascq → Find your way
Level: All
The week will close with the 20th SOFA Technical Committee. This technical committee governs and takes all technical decisions for the roadmap towards upcoming releases. This committee is free and open to all. Don’t hesitate to take part and find out how our open-source software project is managed!
This year again, the SOFA consortium has the pleasure to organize the Open-Source SOFA Awards!
All contributions are eligible for application: it can be an open-source plugin, a pull-request on GitHub, a video, a tutorial or documentation pages! Two award categories are open for competition:
| Organizers’ Prize – 600€ | Public Prize – 400€ |
|---|
The call for the SOFA awards is open until the 7th of November 2025. Any contribution – as long it is open – will be rewarded at the SOFA Week 2025. Winners will be announced during the Symposium on 25th November.
Candidates
| Generic programming of FEM for elasticity | Bilger, Alexandre | Elasticity is a plugin re-implementing the elastic force fields in SOFA in a generic and modular manner. In particular, a single piece of code allows to generate a component for any type of element, in any dimension. On top of that, a generic and element-agnostic component (prefab-like) instantiates the appropriate components based on the elements in the topology. The emphasis was placed on the readability of the code, allowing to easily compare the code to the equations. The plugin supports the following formulations:
|
| Sofa.PointCloud plugin | Marchal, Damien | Sofa.PointCloud is a plugin for the SOFA Framework, dedicated to interactive physical simulation and visualization. It enables the loading, manipulation, and rendering of 3D point clouds (e.g., from 3D reconstruction or scanning) using a Gaussian Splatting rendering approach — providing smooth and high-quality visualization of dense, unstructured point data. This plugin integrates seamlessly into SOFA scenes and can be combined with other simulation or visualization components. |
| SOFA plugin for Needle Insertion Simulations | Skamagkis, Themistoklis | The presentation showcases extensions to two SOFA plugins, originally developed by the ICube Laboratory of Strasbourg University, enabling needle insertion simulations. The additional functionality offered by the plugins is easily integrated into existing SOFA scenes.
Key contributions:
|
| Interface for Haply Robotics haptics | Pernod, Erik | This plugin integrates the Inverse3 haptic device from Haply Robotics into SOFA by providing a high-frequency bidirectional communication pipeline between the device and the simulation. The Inverse3 is interfaced through two dedicated haptics threads running at ~3–5 kHz: one for querying device pose and sending force feedback using SOFA’s LCPForceFeedback mechanism, and a second for safely transferring haptic position and orientation data to the main simulation thread.
This plugin offers a foundation for extending SOFA with high-bandwidth force-feedback interactions in biomechanical and robotics simulations. |
Previous winners
| Organizers’ Prize | Public Prize |
|---|---|
|
|
Live demos
| Compliance Robotics | EMIO – Meet EMIO the robot that learns simulation |
| Compliance Robotics | EMIO – Effort control with an EMIO, as an effector on a rigid robot |
| InfinyTech3D | SurgiViz4D – Echographic Probing for Liver Surgery |
| InfinyTech3D | Specular – Percutaneous Needle Insertion for Tumor Ablation |
| InSimo | IRE – Digital twin of an intelligent robotic endoscopes |
| Kitware | Trame Slicer3D: a Python framework for web applications |
| Inria | Active prostate phantom |
| Inria | Closed-Loop Control for Deformable Robot Dynamics |
| Inria | An Additively Manufactured Foam Soft Robot Manipulator |
Total participants
Industry
| Aceituno Jonathan | Consultant – Freelance, France | Other |
| Allard Jeremie | CTO – InSimo, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Ayodhyan. Bhosale | Program Manager – iLink Digital, India | VR/AR |
| Barbarin Laurie | Founder – Enpeka, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Behnam Binesh | CTO – SiMedix, Iran | AI & simulation |
| Benhaida Fouad | CTO – Digisurge, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Bessard Rémi | Engineer – InSimo, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Carment Thomas | Engineer – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Chafik Ahmed Amine | Engineer – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Choi Jaesoon | CEO – LN Robotics, South Korea | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Coevoet Eulalie | Engineer – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Cysique Roann | Engineer – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Di Vece Chiara | Applied Scientist – Botz Innovation, UK | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Dreyfus Roland | Robotics Engineer – Nanoflex Robotics, Switzerland | AI & simulation |
| Ducrocq Julien | Open to work – None, France | VR/AR |
| Finet Julien | Director of department – Kitware SAS, France | AI & simulation |
| Fonda Pierre | Engineer – InfinyTech3D, France | VR/AR |
| Guy Aymeric | Founder – CEO, Canada | Biomechanical simulation |
| Heidsieck Cécile | Engineer – EssilorLuxottica, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Hussain Raabid | Senior Scientist – Cochlear, France | AI & simulation |
| Iori Francesco | Head of Engineering – Botz Innovation, UK | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Jourdes Francois | Heads of Research – InSimo, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Kollolli Pranathi | Engineer – Mantis Biotech, United States | Biomechanical simulation |
| Kruszewski Alexandre | Full PR – Centrale Lille, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Leao Diego Santos | Unity Developer – VirtualiSurg, Brazil | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Marceau Louis | CTO – Modulate Technologies, Canada | Biomechanical simulation |
| Margeta Jan | Founder – KardioMe, Slovakia | AI & simulation |
| Olsson Fredrik | CEO – Follou AB, Sweden | Haptics |
| Otti Manuela | Project Manager – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Pernod Erik | Director – InfinyTech3D, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Petitprez Pierre-Jean | Engineer – HRV Simulation, France | Haptics |
| Poutot Edouard | Physics Programmer – Elevate Health, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Péan Fabien | Simulation Engineer – Virtonomy, Germany | Biomechanical simulation |
| Rateau Hanaë | R&D Engineer – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Roy Frederick | Simulation Lead – LNRobotics, South Korea | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Ruolin Wang | Data Scientist – BEC Medical, Germany | Biomechanical simulation |
| Scarponi Valentina | Researcher – Carl Zeiss AG, Germany | Biomechanical simulation |
| Simon Clément | Biomechanics researcher – EssilorLuxottica, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Skamagkis Themistoklis | Engineer – InfinyTech3D, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Tereza Thais | Student – Saxion, Netherlands | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Vieira Rafael | Student – Virtualisurg, Brazil | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Watier Dominique | CCO – Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Witchel Georgia | CEO – Mantis Biotech, United States | AI & simulation |
Research
| Abbes Manel | MCF – Université d’Orléans, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Aguilar Luis Antonio | Associate Professor – UNAM, Mexico | Biomechanical simulation |
| Alessandrini Antoine | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Alimi Jean-Michel | Directeur de Recherche – CNRS, France | AI & simulation |
| Alvarez Pablo | Researcher – Inria, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Ammar Mohamed A. | PhD Student – Université de Lille, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Archambaud Baptiste | Engineer – Inria , France | AI & simulation |
| Arteaga Andres | Research Engineer – Inria, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Averta Giuseppe | Assistant Professor – Politecnico di Torino, Italy | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Awada Zeinab | Research Engineer – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Baracat Omar | Engineer – Grenoble INP, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Barbier-Chebbah Alex | Researcher – Institut Pasteur, France | AI & simulation |
| Bernat Jakub | Assistant Professor – Poznan UT, Poland | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Bilger Alexandre | Engineer – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Bjelland Øystein | Associate Professor – NTNU, Norway | Haptics |
| Bloße Albrecht | Scientist – ICCAS, Germany | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Boehler Quentin | Researcher – ETH Zurich, Switzerland | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Bois Léo | Engineer – Inria, France | AI & simulation |
| Bounik Zahra | Researcher – Eindhoven UT, Netherlands | AI & simulation |
| Bulle Raphaël | Post-doc – Inria, France | AI & simulation |
| Bun Siravich | Master Student – Mahidol University, Thailand | Biomechanical simulation |
| Cignolini Chiara | Engineer – University of Verona, Italy | Biomechanical simulation |
| Cocquempot Vincent | Professor – University of Lille, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Corailler Maxence | Research Engineer – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Dakri Abdelmouttaleb | PhD Student – LIRIS, France | AI & simulation |
| Dao Tuan | Researcher – Centrale Lille, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Delorey Charles | PhD Student – University of Leeds, United Kingdom | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Dequidt Jeremie | Professor – University of Lille, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Desrues Gaëtan | Research Engineer – Inria, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Dileep Agneyan | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Dupont Florian | PhD Student – Cnam, France | AI & simulation |
| Duriez Christian | Researcher – Inria/Compliance Robotics, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Evans Michael | PhD Student – University of Sheffield, England | Biomechanical simulation |
| Eyberg Christoph | Researcher – Fraunhofer IPA, Germany | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Fouladi Nejad Soroush | PhD Student – UPC, Spain | Haptics |
| G. Samartín Jorge F. | PhD Student – UPM, Spain | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Gholap Vinayak | PhD student – Université de Liège, Belgium | AI & simulation |
| Goury Olivier | Researcher – Inria, France | Other |
| Halilovic Amar | PhD Student – Ulm University, Germany | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Haouas Wissem | Associate proffesor – FEMTO-ST, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Harders Matthias | Professor – University of Innsbruck, Austria | Other |
| Harsigny Even | PhD Student – Inria, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Hassan Mohammed | PhD student – Tohoku University, Sudan | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Hayati Milad | PhD Student – University of Twente, Netherlands | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Ilman Mert | Assistant Professor – MCB University, Turkey | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Iribar Amaia | PhD Student – VicomTech, Spain | Biomechanical simulation |
| Jain Harsh | Post-Doc – Tata Institute FR, India | Biomechanical simulation |
| Jiang Haolin | Research Assistant – SDU Robotics, Denmark | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Jung Ahmed | PhD Student – Justus Liebig University, Germany | Biomechanical simulation |
| Kapilavai Aditya | Researcher – CNRS-LS2N, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Khan Muhammad Bilal | Researcher – Functional Materials, Germany | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Kim Ha Lim | PhD student – Pusan University, South Korea | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Kwon Ho Beom | Professor – Seoul University, South Korea | Biomechanical simulation |
| Larboulette Caroline | MCF – Université Bretagne Sud, France | AI & simulation |
| Le Gall Alexia | PhD Student – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Lhoutellier Marie | Head of Transfert Innovation – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Li Xin | PhD Student – Inria, China | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Liu Weizhe | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Maldonado Luis | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Marchal Damien | Engineer – CNRS, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Marlon Rodriguez | PhD Student – KU Leuven, Belgium | AI & simulation |
| Martin Claire | PhD Student – Inria, France | Haptics |
| Matteo Pescio | PhD Student – Politecnico di Torino, Italy | AI & simulation |
| Mazier Arnaud | Postdoc – University of Sydney, Australia | Biomechanical simulation |
| Merel Quentin | Industrial Partnership Officer – Inria, France | Other |
| Mott Ted | PhD Student – UCL, United Kingdom | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Moupfouma Thomas | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Mörschel Tobias | PhD Student – University Stuttgart, Germany | Biomechanical simulation |
| N. Kabwangala T. | PhD Student – University of Lille, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Naimbaye K. William | Student – University of Orleans, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Nataf Frédéric | Researcher – LJLL, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Ouyoucef Azouaou | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Ozbek Doga | PhD Student – Aarhus University CS, Denmark | Haptics |
| Peltier Caroline | Engineer – INRAE, France | Biomechanical simulation |
| Perez-Gutierrez Byron | PhD Student – Uni. Mil. N. Granada, Colombia | VR/AR |
| Peters Jorg | Professor – University Florida, United States | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Pozzi Maria | Assistant Professor – University of Siena, Italy | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Pranali Ingole | PhD Student – IIT Madras, India | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Protopapa Andrea | PhD Student – Politecnico di Torino, Italy | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Quentin Peyron | Researcher – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Rodriguez Carlos | Professor – KU Leuven, Belgium | VR/AR |
| Roussel Olivier | Engineer – INRIA Rennes, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Ruozzi Veronica | Researcher – TU Munich, Germany | Biomechanical simulation |
| Saigre-T. Thomas | Postdoc – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Sam Duanmu | PhD Student – U Auckland, New Zealand | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Schwarzbrunn Tim | PhD Student – University of Innsbruck, Austria | Biomechanical simulation |
| Soyoung Lim | Researcher – Samsung Med. Center, South Korea | AI & simulation |
| Stalin Thileepan | Research Fellow – SUTD, Singapore | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Thebault Antoine | PhD Student – URCA, France | Other |
| Thomas John | Postdoctoral Researcher – Institut Pascal, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Tian Sizhe | PhD Student – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Ticona Jose Abel | Researcher – VirtualiSurg, Brazil | Biomechanical simulation |
| Tortos Pablo | PhD Student – Chiba University, Japan | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Tymkovych Maksym | PhD Student – Associate Professor, Ukraine | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Vaidya Atharva | PhD student – University of Innsbruck, Germany | AI & simulation |
| Wei Ruofeng | Research Fellow – BWH & Harvard, United States | AI & simulation |
| Wei Ziyi | PhD Student – Inria , France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Wood James | PhD student – Queensland UT, Australia | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Xu Yiqun | PhD Student – CUHKSZ, China | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Yinoussa Adagolodjo | Assistant professor – Université de Lille, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Zeng Ziqiu | Research Fellow – NUS, Singapore | AI & simulation |
| Zhang Chi | Faculty – Texas A&M University, United States | Biomechanical simulation |
| Zhang Zhongkai | Associate Professor – CAS, Hong Kong | Robotics or soft-robotics |
| Zheng Gang | Researcher – Inria, France | Robotics or soft-robotics |
Consortium staff
| Baksic, Paul | Engineer – SOFA Consortium, France | Medical robotics |
| Talbot, Hugo | Engineer – SOFA Consortium, France | Community, Biomechanics |
