Hannah Stuart

Hannah Stuart is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and Visiting Professor at the Cluster of Excellence IntCDC. She holds the Don M. Cunningham Endowed Professorship and focuses on embodied intelligence for robotic dexterity in challenging environments.

• Education: BS in Mechanical Engineering (George Washington University, 2011), MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering (Stanford University, 2013/2018)
• Affiliations: UC Berkeley, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

Research Themes: Her work pioneers tactile robotics through bioinspired design, developing novel manipulation strategies for unstructured environments. Key areas include soft multi-material mechanisms, skin contact physics, and terrain-adaptive locomotion systems.

• 2023 Articles: Addressed locomotion physics in regolith, friction mechanics in tether systems, and prosthetic transmission tradeoffs
• 2022 Breakthrough: Created mole crab-inspired self-burrowing robots for subterranean exploration

Scientific Recognition:

• NSF CAREER grant
• NASA Early Career Faculty award

Technical Contributions: Innovations in tactile sensing hardware, including smart suction cups (IROS 2021) and textured skin friction systems (IEEE RA-L 2020). Her lab, Embodied Dexterity Group, emphasizes real-world contact physics for robotic applications.