Director

J. Sean Humbert is the Denver Business Challenge Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the founding director of the Robotics Graduate Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis, along with MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech. His main research areas are robotics and autonomy, with a focus in perception, reduction and feedback principles in biology. Nervous systems have evolved to make useful reductions of sensory-rich and high dimensional data, forming simple representations that allow animals to perform well with limited computation in the presence of uncertainty. His laboratory works with biologists to apply control- and information-theoretic tools to formalize these principles in small animals such as insects, providing insight into the biology and resulting in novel, robust and computationally efficient solutions for engineered systems. 

Dr. Humbert has served as a member of the Board for Army Science and Technology (BAST), a core member of the Board on Army RDT&E, Systems Acquisition and Logistics (BARSL), a member of the DARPA MTO Microsystems Exploratory Council (MEC), and is an AIAA Associate Fellow. He is the recipient of the AIAA National Capital Section Hal Andrews Young Scientist/Engineer Award, an ARO Young Investigator Award, and a member of the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) at CU Boulder.