Matei Ciocarlie

Matei Ciocarlie is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at Columbia University. Matei completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York. His doctoral dissertation, focused on reducing the computational complexity associated with dexterous robotic grasping, was the winner of the 2010 Robotdalen Scientific Award. Before joining the Mechanical Engineering faculty at Columbia, Matei was a Research Scientist and then Group Manager at Willow Garage, Inc., and then a Senior Research Scientist at Google, Inc. In recognition of his work, Matei was awarded the 2013 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award, a 2015 Young Investigator Award by the Office of Naval Research, a 2016 CAREER Award by the National Science Foundation, and a 2016 Sloan Fellowship.
Matei main interest is in reliable robotic performance in unstructured, human environments, focusing on areas such as novel robotic hand designs and control, autonomous and Human-in-the-Loop mobile manipulation, shared autonomy, teleoperation, and assistive robotics. He is also interested in novel hand designs that combine mechanical and computational intelligence, and make use or tactile, proprioceptive or range sensing in novel ways.