News about Robotics Faculty – Page 2

Dr. George Presents at BioHive Summit

Dr. George recently presented at the Biohive summit. This was a full-day, in-person event that featured a line-up of incredible speakers. BioHive records more of our popular “BioHive Talks” which highlights thought-provoking and inspiring conversations for our community. Biohive amplifies voices for stakeholders around the state including industry and those outside life sciences. Biohive seeks to share the Utah story and highlight issues that need to be addressed....

Dr. George Featured on Brown Journal of World Affairs Podcast

The Brown Journal of World Affairs is a semiannual international relations publication produced at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Founded in 1993, the Journal provides a forum for world leaders, policymakers, and prominent academics to engage in a vigorous debate of intellectual breadth and vibrancy. Each issue examines salient and emerging international topics and is circulated widely in the United States and abroad. In recent years, contributors have included Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Dilma Rousseff, Joseph Nye, and many others. Dr. George’s podcast interview highlights his work on bionic prostheses, commercialization of new technology, and...

Kuntz Lab Presents Two Papers at 2022 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics

Kuntz Lab will have two papers appearing at the 2022 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics: “Toward Targeted Therapy in the Brain by Leveraging Screw-Tip Soft Magnetically Steerable Needles,” Trevor J. Schwehr, Adam J. Sperry, John D. Rolston, Matthew D. Alexander, Jake J. Abbott, and Alan Kuntz; as well as “Optimizing Continuum Robot Tendon Routing for Minimally Invasive Brain Surgery,” Margaret Rox, Aidan Copinga, Robert P. Naftel, Robert J. Webster III, and Alan Kuntz....

Prof. Lenzi Receives 2020 NSF CAREER Award

Department of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Tommaso Lenzi has been awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award. The CAREER program is one of the NSF’s most prestigious award programs, offering 5 years of support to early-career faculty with the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. The research grant, entitled “Bio-inspired Multi-joint Design and Control for Efficient and Lightweight Wearable Robots” will provide new knowledge related to wearable robotics by using bio-inspired actuation systems that concurrently assist multiple joints, much like human muscles. Existing exoskeletons are heavy and inefficient, which...

Congratulations to Profs. John Hollerbach and Jake Abbott for receiving awards at 2020 IEEE ICRA

Today at the ICRA awards ceremony, John Hollerbach received the IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation for “foundational research on robot calibration and leadership and service in publications, conferences, and society management”, and Jake Abbott received a Distinguished Service Award from IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters as an Outstanding Reviewer for the period 2015-2019....

Prof. Kam Leang elevated to ASME Fellow

Congratulations to University of Utah mechanical engineering associate professor Kam Leang, who has been elected a Fellow of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Read more… ...

Prof. John Hollerbach receives the 2020 IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation

Congratulations to Prof. John Hollerbach! He received the 2020 IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). The award will be presented to him at the 2020 IEEE ICRA conference in Paris. For your information, past recipients of this prestigious award are listed at: https://www.ieee-ras.org/awards-recognition/society-awards/69-awards-recognition/society-awards/56-ieee-ras-george-saridis-leadership-award-in-robotics-and-automation ...

Dr. Daniel Drew will join University of Utah Robotics Center

Daniel Drew will be joining the Robotics Center and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from a postdoctoral research position in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2018. His research focuses on the development of autonomous insect-scale systems, bridging the worlds of robotics, MEMS, and design. His past work includes development of a flying millimeter-scale robot with no mechanical moving parts (the “ionocraft”), investigating new methods for resource-constrained communication and control, and studying how humans interact with swarms of insect-scale robots. Website link: http://www.danieldrew.me...

Dr. Alan Kuntz joins University of Utah Robotics Center

Alan Kuntz will be joining the Robotics Center and the School of Computing from a postdoctoral research position in mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University. He earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in computer science. His research interests include shared autonomy, motion planning, and design optimization for manipulators and tentacle-like, flexible robots with an emphasis on home assistance and surgical applications. His interest in health care applications stems from his previous experience as a paramedic in the 911 system of Albuquerque, NM....

Abbott, Kong, Leang and Monson receive $2M NSF EFRI Award

Congratulations to Profs. Abbott, Kong, Leang and Monson on their new $2M NSF EFRI Award, project in collaboration with R. Rajamani of Univ. of Minnesota and O. Pak of Santa Clara Univ. Project tile: “EFRI C3 SoRo: Magneto-electroactive Soft, Continuum, Compliant, Configurable (MESo-C3) Robots for Medical Applications Across Scales” The vision of this collaborative project between the University of Utah, the University of Minnesota, and Santa Clara University is to extend the capabilities of clinicians by enabling minimally invasive access to locations in the human body that are currently difficult or impossible to reach, using a new class of...