High-speed sensing with stretchable optical waveguides
Anastasia Koivikko is Postdoc at Cornell University, working in Prof. Rob Shepherd’s Organic Robotics Lab. She earned her doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from Tampere University, where her research focused on pneumatic strain sensors and grippers. Currently, her work focuses on high-speed optical sensing in biomedical applications.
Stability considerations in the control and design of active mechanical linkages
Neelima Sharma is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy. Neelima received her Ph.D. at Yale University, studying the role of mechanical stability in animal morphology and neural control, focusing on mechanical linkages such as fingers and limbs. Currently, she studies how embryonic muscle contractions determine the articular surface geometries of the synovial joints.
Fail fast – Serving athletes through innovation
Joe Gault is the Director of Innovation Engineering (aka The Nerdery) in Space Kitchen, Nike’s futurist studio. Here Joe tinkers at the intersection of athlete and technology to create the future of sport. Prior to Nike, Joe held innovation and product development roles at Microsoft, Xerox, and Applied Science Fiction. Joe received his BSME at the University of Texas.
Incorporating microsystems into human-scale wearable systems
Sarah Bergbreiter joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University as a Professor in the fall of 2018 after spending ten years at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prof. Bergbreiter received the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2008, the NSF CAREER Award in 2011, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2013 for her research on engineering robotic systems down to sub-millimeter size scales. She has received several Best Paper awards at conferences like ICRA, IROS, and Hilton Head Workshop, and is a Fellow of the ASME.
Textiles for soft wearable robots
Vanessa Sanchez is an incoming Assistant Professor joining Rice University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering in Summer 2024. She aims to make our clothing smarter and more assistive through working at the intersection of materials, manufacturing, and robotics. Her research has been featured in Vice, Wired, and Engadget and she has been named to the list of 50 Women in Robotics You Need to Know, recognized as an ACS CAS Future Leader, and selected for Forbes 30 Under 30.
Multistability and non-local feedback in mutable mechanical metamaterials
Michael Dimitriyev is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. His research involves the development of geometric models and computational tools to explore the mechanics and thermodynamics of soft materials with linked, entangled, and network microstructures.
Strength imparted from the pressure sensitivity of materials
Andrew Gross is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina. He leads the Gross Materials Lab, where the fundamental mechanical behavior of architected materials is investigated with numerical and experimental approaches.
Comparative Biomechanics of Mammalian Skin Using an Engineering Lens
Andrew Schulz is an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in the Haptic Intelligence Department studying comparative sensing through different animal models. Andrew received his Ph.D. at Georgia Institute of Technology studying elephant trunk biomechanics and has continued to work on biomechanics of skin using knitting, modeling, and simulations to understand skin properties in specialized animal species.
Haptic Knits: a new paradigm in wearable technologies
Cosima du Pasquier is a Postdoc at Stanford University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, collaborating with researchers from MIT, and the University of Houston. Her work focuses on designing and fabricating wearable healthcare technologies, with expertise in structural mechanics and materials. She received her BSc, MSc, and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich, with her doctoral research awarded the ETH Medal.
Textile Soft Robots for the Upper Extremity: Actuation, Materials, and Evaluation
Connor McCann is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, working with Profs. Conor Walsh and Katia Bertoldi. His research focuses on wearable soft robots designed to assist the human shoulder joint. Through his work, he has sought to understand the sometimes surprising ways in which textile material mechanics can influence the performance of these wearable systems.
