Dr Lehnert is a lecturer within the Electrical Engineering and Robotics school at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and is a Chief Investigator with the QUT Centre for Robotics focusing on research within the robotic physical interaction program. Chris has over ten years’ experience in teaching and research in robotics.

Dr Lehnert's research career has focused on contributing to the development of novel robotic vision and grasping methods to enable robots to physically interact with the world. Dr Lehnert has focused on applying research to real-world problems including agriculture and the e-commerce sector where he has made significant contributions both in research and impact in industry. His goal as a researcher is to become an expert in robotic grasping and manipulation focusing on real-world applications such as agriculture, warehouse automation and domestic household environments. His passion is to develop core research in robotic manipulation and vision to solve challenging problems in real-world environments to make a significant impact in academia, industry, and the international community. 

Dr Lehnert received a B.Eng (Hons) in Mechatronics from The University of Queensland in 2009 and a PhD in robotics from the Queensland University of Technology in 2015 where his dissertation developed novel machine learning methods for controlling complex robotic arms.

With the combination of his strengths in research, mechatronic engineering, and project leadership Dr Lehnert has developed novel robotic harvesting methods and patented robotic harvesting technologies (2015-2020) which have led to the development of a proof-of-concept robot that has achieved the worlds-best performance for autonomously harvesting capsicums in a commercial protected cropping system.