I am a roboticist conducting developmental robotics and artificial life research. At Columbia University, I earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering under Professor Hod Lipson at the Creative Machines Lab.
I design, build, program, and simulate modular and particle robots. My research focuses on robots that can grow and self-improve by integrating materials found or taken from other robots. Further, I study modular and particle robots that can operate without central control. My findings are recorded in my Ph.D. thesis on Metabolic Machines and will be presented at ReMAR 2024.
Additionally, throughout my seven years at the Creative Machines Lab, I have developed an autonomous hunting drone that can operate in GPS-deprived environments, built a data collection platform for our phenotyping and disease detection project, and used neural networks to mimic visual design intuition. I mentor graduate and undergraduate students in my research and assist in teaching Digital Manufacturing and Evolutionary Computation.
I am passionate about researching robots that imitate or transcend their biological counterparts, building machines that self-assemble and self-improve, and using my knowledge of AI, digital manufacturing, and robotics to connect machine intelligence and the real world.