Robert J. Wood is a roboticist and a professor of

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

at the

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is the engineering school within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, offering degrees in engineering and applied sciences to graduate students admitted ...

and the

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (pronounced "veese") is a cross-disciplinary research institute at Harvard University focused on bridging the gap between academia and industry (translational medicine) by drawing inspirat ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, and is the director of the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory. At Harvard, he directs the

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

-funded

RoboBee RoboBee is a tiny robot capable of partially untethered flight, developed by a research robotics team at Harvard University. The culmination of twelve years of research, RoboBee solved two key technical challenges of micro-robotics. Engineers ...

s project, a 5-year project to build a swarm of robotic bees.

Background

Wood received a BS in electrical engineering from

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. It was established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church but has been nonsectarian since 1920 ...

in 1998. He received a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in electrical engineering in 2004 from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

under Ron Fearing with a thesis titled ''Composite microstructures, microactuators and sensors for biologically inspired micro air vehicles''.

Awards

*2018 Max Planck-Humboldt Medal *2014

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

Emerging Explorer *2012 Alan Waterman Award *2008 MIT Technology Reviews

TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at '' Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

list *2008 DOD

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States federal government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. T ...

*2008

NSF CAREER Award The National Science Foundation CAREER award is the most prestigious award presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States Federal Government to support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through rese ...

*2008 ONR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award *2008

AFOSR The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research and development detachment of the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of direct-energy based aerospace warf ...

Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award *2006

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

Young Faculty Award

Article

''The Robobee Project Is Building Flying Robots the Size of Insects''
by Robert Wood, Radhika Nagpal and Gu-Yeon Wei in the March 11, 2013

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

References

Living people American electrical engineers American roboticists UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers {{US-mechanical-engineer-stub