Olin College Professor Selected to Participate in NAE U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Newswise — Olin College Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jeff Dusek is one of eighty-four engineers selected to participate in National Academy of Engineering’s 24^th Annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.

NAE chose engineers between the ages of 30-45 who “are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines” to participate in the event to take place in Lexington, Massachusetts in September.

Dr. Dusek joined Olin in 2017 from Harvard where he served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Prior to joining Harvard, he held several teaching and research roles at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology’s Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling (CENSAM). Dusek’s research and teaching interests encompass broad themes in marine robotics and hydrodynamic sensing, and accessibility and adaptive technology. 

Currently, Dusek is the leader of the Laboratory for Adaptation, Inclusion, and Robotics (LAIR) at Olin, where he pursues his research interests in accessibility, personal mobility and underwater robotics. In the adaptive technology space, undergraduate researchers in the LAIR lab are working on innovations to improve the accessibility of personal storage accessories for powered and manual mobility devices, as well as developing software and hardware solutions to increase the performance of mobility devices through the incorporation of smart technologies. Lab members are also refining a miniature fish-like underwater robot that utilizes a novel actuator to achieve a biomimetic swimming gait.

“I am looking forward to spending time with this diverse group of fellow engineers, learning about cutting edge developments on a range of important topics and then bringing back what I have learned to Olin,” said Dusek. “I fully expect this experience to inform not only my teaching  but my research as well.”