Faculty News

New Faculty

Daniel E. Koditschek, Chair, Electrical and Systems Engineering (effective January 1, 2005). Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Yale.

Dan arrived this fall as a Visiting Professor from a faculty post at the University of Michigan. He is a prominent researcher in robotics and control theory; sensor-driven dexterous robot manipulation and juggling robots. Dan is a leader in the field of legged robots, especially hexapod robots inspired in biology. He developed hypotheses about the control strategies in insect locomotion to understand the mechanical and neurological basis of locomotion. RHex, a short, six-legged robot that scampers like a cockroach, is used as a working model of the principles that Dan and a team of researchers are seeking to uncover.

Ravi Radhakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.

Ravi joined Penn this fall from a postdoctoral position at NYU’s Courant Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Research interests: Studying biochemical phenomena at various lengths and timescales from electronic structure to signaling pathways by employing tools from Computational Biology, Statistical Mechanics, and Quantum Mechanics. Dr. Radhakrishnan's research lies in the interface of chemical physics and molecular biology and is currently focused on various biophysical and biochemical problems spanning carcinogenesis, therapeutic inhibition of signaling enzymes, RNA catalysis, membrane phenomena, and resistance mechanisms in antibiotics.

Andrew Tsourkas, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Andrew joined Penn this fall from a postdoctoral research position at the Center for Molecular Imaging Research in the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Research interests: Developing novel molecular imaging probes to study genetic and protein expression profiles via fluorescence, bioluminescence, and magnetic resonance imaging. Dr. Tsourkas' current research focuses on the detection of gene expression using novel oligonucleotide-based fluorescent probes, targeting molecular markers of disease with magneto-optical nanoparticles, and using molecular reporters to monitor cell signaling pathways.

Mark Yim, Associate Professor of MEAM, and Gabel Family Term Junior Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford.

Mark joined Penn from positions at Palo Alto Research Center where he served as Area Manager of Smart Electro-Mechanical Systems and as Senior Member of the Research Staff.

Mark’s research interests include modular robotics and reconfigurable locomotion systems, MEMS and batch fabrication technology, active control of buckling, and brute force digital time optimal control.

Dr. Yim is internationally known for his seminal work in modular and reconfigurable robots. His robots are made up of many repeated modules. Each module is virtually a robot in and of itself having a computer, a motor, sensors and the ability to attach to other modules.