Dylan Losey

Dylan Losey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, part of the College of Engineering. He leads the Collaborative Robotics Lab (Collab), focusing on developing learning and control algorithms for robots collaborating with humans.

Education: Ph.D. & M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University (2018 & 2016), B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University (2014). Formerly a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University (2019–2020) and Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley (2017).

Research Interests include Human-Robot Interaction, Machine Learning, and Control Theory, with applications in assistive robotics, healthcare, and user-centered design. His lab creates robots that personalize behavior to adapt to human needs, such as the Kiri-Spoon for robot-assisted feeding.

Awards include the NSF CAREER Award (2024), Best Application Paper (IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 2024), and Outstanding New Assistant Professor (Virginia Tech, 2023).

Advising & Grants: Advises students like Maya Keely and Heramb Nemlekar. His NSF CAREER grant supports research on bidirectional human-robot communication. Collaborates with institutions like The Virginia Home (Richmond) for user-centric design.

Labs & Teams: Directs the Collaborative Robotics Lab, emphasizing interdisciplinary work with partners like Cornell University. Recent projects include assistive robotics for mobility-impaired users and haptic display systems.