Tania Morimoto

Tania Morimoto is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on the design and control of flexible and soft robots for medical and exploration applications, including personalized surgical robots and intuitive human-in-the-loop interfaces. She leads efforts in haptic device development for education, notably creating the Hapkit and H3Kit systems used in STEM labs globally.

She holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University's CHARM Lab. Her work bridges robotics, haptics, and medical engineering, with key innovations in continuum robot design, wireless sensing, and surgical teleoperation systems.

Key research areas include soft robotics for minimally invasive surgery, wearable haptic devices, and scalable pneumatic control systems. Her team has developed novel methods for patient-specific robot design using preoperative medical imaging, along with virtual reality interfaces for surgical planning.

Notable achievements include the NSF CAREER Award (2022) for work on handheld continuum robots, and contributions to wireless force sensing technologies. Her educational initiatives have expanded access to hands-on robotics learning through low-cost hardware kits adapted for remote instruction.