M. Ani Hsieh

M. Ani Hsieh is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, affiliated with the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She holds dual appointments in the departments of Computer and Information Science and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. As Deputy Director of the GRASP Laboratory and Chair of the ROBO Program, she leads research initiatives in robotics and autonomous systems.

Her research focuses on extracting predictive models of complex nonlinear dynamical systems, adaptive sampling with mobile robots, and leveraging environmental dynamics for planning and control. Key areas include swarm robotics, fluid flow analysis, and control theory. Recent work emphasizes knowledge-based neural ordinary differential equations (NODEs) for soft robots and data-driven approaches for environmental monitoring.

Notable achievements include keynote presentations at LARS ’24 and contributions to multi-robot systems for environmental sensing. Hsieh’s lab develops innovative solutions for heterogeneous robot teams, integrating machine learning with physical system understanding. Current projects explore large-scale exploration with air-ground teams and resilient consensus algorithms for swarms.

Her research group operates from the Pennovation Works facility and maintains an active publication record in top-tier robotics venues. Students advised include Dr. Victoria Edwards, Dr. KongYao Chee, and Dr. Tom Zhang, reflecting her commitment to mentoring next-generation robotics researchers.