Research

TL;DR

I started with a combined degree with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and M.S. in agricultural engineering with the ABE Automation and Robotics Lab at Iowa State University, developing robots to improve data throughput in agronomy, to help farmers improve yield and decrease environmental impact. I then completed a PhD with the Faboratory at Yale University, and served as a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow, tackling challenges in soft robotics, where I used flexible materials to enable new functionalities in robots for both Earth and space. The overarching theme of my dissertation was embedding functionality into "robotic skins" that can allow engineers to make use of the relatively unused surfaces of robots, while also serving as a multi-functional robotic prototyping platform for resource-constrained applications (think: spacecraft, dense urban areas, remote research facilities).

Since joining Arieca in April 2022, I have been contributing to the commercialization of liquid metal embedded elastomers (LMEEs) to solve problems in thermal management, primarily for the automotive and semiconductor industries. My current role is the Director of Hardware R&D, where we test our thermal interface materials in situations that mimic our end-users' setups, such as smartphones, laptops, PC's, etc.. I am co-PI on collaborations with Carmel Majidi's Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where we explore emerging applications of LMEEs, ranging from bodyheat-powered electronics to high-performing interface materials for aerospace applications. Additionally, I stay active in the soft robotics and stretchable electronics communities through joint publications (see Google Scholar) and organizations such as the Nano-Bio Materials Consortium.

Each new chapter in life brings exciting changes, new opportunities, and surprising discoveries. We can only live in the most recent one, building upon the experiences, memories, and skills gained in each prior chapter. This reverse-chronological ordering reflects this reality in a clean ordering; in reality, the journey was anything but linear.

Chapter 3: Thermal Interface Materials at Arieca

April 2022 - Present

After my PhD, I wanted to gain first-hand experience in startups, to see how companies are born. Like a star, they are at first just a nebulus idea, then they condense into a shining star to shed light on how new technology can solve contemporary problems. So, I joined Arieca around its series A close, as the company was getting ready to scale up some key customer engagements and government contracts. Arieca was co-founded by Navid Kazem and his PhD advisor, Carnegie Mellon University professor Carmel Majidi. They were investigating adding liquid metals to polymers to make multifunctional composites, including stretchable circuits and thermally conductive rubber (coining the terms "thubber" and liquid metal embedded elastomers, or LMEE). In 2018, they incorporated Arieca to commercialize LMEE, pursuing government research grants and B2B sales to partners primarily in the semiconductor and automotive industries.

Currently, I serve as the Director of Hardware R&D, where I lead an engineering team that studies how our thermal interface materials perform in end-use hardware setups, to aid our customers in their material qualification and pathfinding processes. Key engagements include joint research with ROHM Semiconductor and scaling up production with Nissan Chemical.

Additionally, our team conducts research into how our materials could solve fundamental problems in adjacent industries and emerging applications, through government contracts as well as commercial partnerships. This includes collaboration at CMU, where we make bodyheat powered wearable electronics (funded by the Nano-Bio Materials Consortium, where I was recently appointed to the Technical Advisory Council). Our recent Advanced Functional Materials paper showed technical feasibility of powering a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor for continuous monitoring of heartrate and blood oxygen without a battery.

Chapter 2: Soft Robots at Purdue and Yale University

Aug 2016 - April 2022

In Fall 2016, I joined the Faboratory at Purdue University with Prof. Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, to work on soft robotics. We applied compliant materials to robots, toward the goals of increased safety and dexterity. I then moved with the lab to Yale University, where I embedded robotic functionalities into thin skins, and designed shape changing robots. In Spring 2021, I received the Henry Prentiss Becton Prize for my research, and defended my dissertation in December 2021. I then stayed on as a post-doctoral researcher until I moved to Arieca in April 2022, formally receiving my PhD diploma in May 2022. All major projects led to peer-reviewed publications (see below), with my favorites described in detail below, along with selected publications:

1. Embedding actuation and sensing into planar "robotic skins" to turn passive deformable bodies - including foam, clothing, and stuffed animals - into robots (Figure 1, Video 1, and paper in Science Robotics). These multi-functional robots could serve as lightweight tools for space missions, while also finding applications as wearable exosuits or assistive devices here on Earth. Additional coverage can be found on the web, including at Smithsonian.com NationalGeographic.com (link a victim of link rot).

   

   
   
2. Making stretchable "jamming skins" that change their stiffness and stretchability upon application of a vacuum (Figure 2, Video 2, and paper in Advanced Functional Materials). Very few soft robots can switch their stiffness to interact with the environment; those that can stiffen often require significant design constraints (such as a large volume of stiffness-changing material) which limit their applicability. By embedding strong jamming capabilities into thin sheets, I aimed to allow stiffness-changing capabilities to be added to the full range of soft robots. After I solved the major mechanical and manufacturing challenges, the final jamming skins are now scalable and can be readily integrated into other future soft robots.

   

   
   
3. Sensors for impact-resistant, lightweight "tensegrity" robots (see bottom of Figure 1, our review paper in Soft Robotics or Vytas Sunspiral's NASA 360 talk). Most of my work in this area used short rods (10-30 cm) connected to stretchable sensors and pneumatic actuators, inspired by NASA Ames, including my NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship mentor Massimo Vespignani, who has demonstrated a human-sized "Super Ball Bot" that can absorb heavy impacts and even survive drops of several meters. These tensegrities have potential as exploratory robots that can exploit steep terrain changes, rather than navigating around them.
4. Making shape-changing robots with talented collaborators from Yale, the University of Vermont, and Tufts University. Example robots include our cable-driven shape-changing robot and our robot that changes shape to locomote in different environments. Shi En Kim concisely summarized the project, along with the robotic skins project, on Massive Science.
5. My final PhD projects were to create variable-stiffness robotic skins (paper in RA-L), and stretchable circuits with embedded sensors, to allow them to sense their shape (Video 3; paper in Advanced Intelligent Systems). The skins had onboard orientation sensors and stretchable sensors (similar to in the OmniSkins project, above), and could relay their data to an external PC. Coupled with stretchable onboard computation (under review), we envision future systems that can sense their own shape in real time, enabling distortion-free flexible displays, smarter soft robots, and intelligently adaptive wearable electronics.

Chapter 1: Agricultural Robotics at Iowa State

May 2014 - Aug 2016

During my concurrent degrees at Iowa State University (B.S. Mechanical Engineering and M.S. Agricultural Engineering, with thesis), I worked with Lie Tang on developing robotic systems and image-processing pipelines for data collection during the entire plant life-cycle. This data is useful for improving crop yield and studying the effects of various environmental parameters on plant health.

At first, I assisted with data collection and mechanical design (including the stand analyzer for Dr. Tang's startup, FieldRobo LLC), culminating in my masters' project where I led a small team (a few undergraduates and masters' students) to design and program robots to fulfill the goals of the broader projects. The most sophisticated one (prototype shown below in Figure 3), for the Enviratron project, was a mobile rover with a robot arm and a Kinect V2 3D camera for collision-free probing during use with researchers' specified instruments, such as a fluorometer. We additionally created a slender and compact field robot for 15% of the cost of the commercial alternative, allowing us to collect data on crops, such as corn and soybeans, that are grown in fields with narrow row spacing that conventional field robots could not navigate.