People
Principal Investigator
Tania Morimoto
Tania Morimoto is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and in the Department of Surgery at the University of California, San Diego. She received the B.S. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering, followed by the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, also in mechanical engineering. At Stanford, she worked with Allison Okamura on designing personalized flexible, continuum robots for surgical applications, as well as on the creation of a low-cost, educational haptic device.
She is a recipient of the Hellman Fellowship (2021), the NSF CAREER Award (2022), the Beckman Young Investigator Award (2022), and the ASEE Outstanding New Mechanical Engineering Educator Award (2023).
Postdocs
Sukjun Kim
Sukjun Kim is a postdoctoral researcher whose research focuses on development of miniaturized vine robots for surgical applications. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Seoul National University in 2017, followed by the M.S and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
PhD Students
Robert Bloom
Robert Bloom is a PhD student in mechanical engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He is a Sloan Scholar and a GEM scholar. His current research interests are in haptics display interfaces for various healthcare applications.
Email: rlbloom@ucsd.edu
Yunti (Anna) Xu
Yunti (Anna) Xu is a PhD student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department at UCSD. She is a recipient of the Powell Fellowship. She obtained her B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science at the University of Toronto with a Robotics major and an Artificial Intelligence minor. Her current research interests include the control and motion planning of continuum robots.
Email: ytxu@ucsd.edu
Anoush Sepehri
Anoush Sepehri is a Ph.D student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He is a recipient of the NSERC Fellowship. He received the B.A.Sc degree in Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics from the University of British Columbia, Canada in 2022. His research interests are in soft and bioinspired robotics for healthcare/medical applications.
Email: asepehri@ucsd.edu
Aedan Mangan
Aedan is a PhD Student in the MAE Department at UCSD. He is a recipient of the Powell Fellowship. Prior to the Morimoto Lab, he worked on Johnson & Johnson’s next-generation surgical robotic platform (Ottava). Aedan holds a Master of Bioengineering (Global Medical Innovation track) from Rice University and a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton. During both of these he gained experience in medical device startups, Biodesign, and sustainability. Aedan’s current research interests are in the design and control of novel medical robots.
Email: amangan@ucsd.edu, LinkedIn
Karen Whirley
Karen is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC San Diego. She is a recipient of the NSF GRFP. She holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University with minors in Robotics, Biomedical Engineering, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Her research interests include design of soft surgical robotics.
Email: kwhirley@ucsd.edu
Jess Healey
Jess is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC San Diego. She has a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University with a minor in Experience Design, during which she obtained robotics experience working at the NU Institute for Experiential Robotics and Amazon Robotics. Her research interests include soft robotics, haptic design, and marine robotics.
Email: jehealey@ucsd.edu
Website: jesshealey.net
M.S. Students
Yarah Fateih - M.S. Student, MAE
Nathan Cramer - M.S. Student, MAE
Noah Jones - MAE
Undergraduate Students
Kaitlyn Lavarias - MAE, RSRI Program, since Fall 2022
Zachary Huang - MAE, since Fall 2022
Nina Sediki - STEMULATE Program, since Summer 2023
Hannah Lim - BE, RSRI Program, since Fall 2023
Miheer Potdar - MAE, since Spring 2024
Aldo Hernandez - STEMULATE Program, since Summer 2024
Tanya Kakar - BE, since Fall 2024
Aaditya Shah - MAE, since Fall 2024
Nathan Ng - MAE, since Fall 2024
Alumni
Click here for a list of past lab members
Loki Kadomoto
Loki is the first Post Dog to join the Morimoto Lab. His research focuses on new data-driven approaches to optimizing treat consumption. He is known for taking frequent naps in his office and for making guest appearances in virtual lectures.
Michael Lin
Michael is currently a visiting scholar from Taiwan. He has over 10 years of experience in both academia and industry. His research interests include 1) investigating how to provide haptic feedback to humans via his mouth and teeth and 2) building the fastest classification algorithm to distinguish chicken wings from different shops.
Coco Park
Coco is a visiting scholar from South Korea. He is a well-known cognitive scientist dedicated to dog-human interaction. He has years of experience in communicating with humans and specializes in Korean. His current research focuses on natural language processing for humans and dogs, and he is interested in extending his work to other languages, including English.