Brian the Researcher (this is a nerd friendly zone)
So, if you are here, then you probably want to know what "Brian the Researcher" is all about. Well, during the daylight hours, my formal training and education are actually in engineering, and I am an Assistant Professor of Biology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (well, I was, but as of January 2023, I'll be an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at my old stomping grounds - Case Western Reserve University). I went to college and graduate school at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), where I studied aerospace engineering for my BS, and mechanical engineering for my MS and PhD. In graduate school, I studied biologically inspired robotics under the tutelage of engineering professor Dr. Roger Quinn, with co-advisement from biologist Dr. Mark Willis, and additional awesome guidance from biologist Dr. Roy Ritzmann. So, what in the world is biologically inspired robotics? Put simply, it's looking at how animals and nature deal with problems that we care about in engineering, and then trying to apply the principles that we observe to develop improved engineered systems. For example, if I told you to walk down a hallway, you would have no problem doing it. You would even do really smart things like avoiding obstacles such as other people, or debris on the floor, without anyone telling you to. If the hallway's floor consisted of material that changed from tile to wood to carpet, you wouldn't really care. It turns out that its hard to make an engineered system that can easily deal with these kinds of tasks, though researchers at universities, research institutes, and companies are making really awesome progress. An engineered system would have to handle changing terrain (going from tile to carpet is not as easy as you think), sense the world around it (different types of sight, smell, taste, touch, sound, and even Earth's magnetic field), process the sensed information (computers have CPU's, humans and animals have nervous systems and brains), and deal with unanticipated events (when a person rounds a corner and almost runs into you). Biologically inspired robotics looks at the principles that animals use accomplish these and other tasks, and then tries to implement the relevant principles in engineered systems. If you want to see examples of this kind of work, check out the following list of websites (NOTE THAT THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE - THERE ARE LOTS OF OTHER REALLY AWESOME PEOPLE WORKING ON INSANELY COOL STUFF!)
Hopefully, everything above, combined with the rest of my site, tells you that I AM BOTH AN ENGINEER AND A MUSICIAN! I am, and need both. Especially in education, I hear so many statements that seem to imply that we need things related to science, OR things related to the arts. As one of my mentors back at CWRU would say, this is not about either/or, its about both/and. Especially today, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) matter, and we need them to be competitive with the rest of the world. I think that the arts also matter, and that we need them to be competitive too. Just look at the influence of styles such as flamenco and jazz on the rest of the world. I have met so many people that are scientists and engineers, and are even from other professions like law, that are also musicians or artists of of some from. I think there's a reason why it's usually called a college of arts AND sciences.
So, with all of that out of the way, why do I have Legos in my banner picture? Well, if you haven't noticed, the Legos are in the shape of musical notes (sixteenth notes, to be exact). They also have gears for the noteheads. It also turns out that they way the notes are hinged together forms a four-bar mechanism. Different types of mechanisms show up in things like car engines, transmissions, suspension systems, aircraft, doors, computer keyboards, robots, and even instruments like trumpets!
- Case Western Reserve University's Biologically Inspired Robotics Lab
- Boston Dynamics
- The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
- The University Of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab
- The Poly-PEDAL Lab at UC Berkley
- The Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland
- The Harvard Microrobotics Lab
Hopefully, everything above, combined with the rest of my site, tells you that I AM BOTH AN ENGINEER AND A MUSICIAN! I am, and need both. Especially in education, I hear so many statements that seem to imply that we need things related to science, OR things related to the arts. As one of my mentors back at CWRU would say, this is not about either/or, its about both/and. Especially today, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) matter, and we need them to be competitive with the rest of the world. I think that the arts also matter, and that we need them to be competitive too. Just look at the influence of styles such as flamenco and jazz on the rest of the world. I have met so many people that are scientists and engineers, and are even from other professions like law, that are also musicians or artists of of some from. I think there's a reason why it's usually called a college of arts AND sciences.
So, with all of that out of the way, why do I have Legos in my banner picture? Well, if you haven't noticed, the Legos are in the shape of musical notes (sixteenth notes, to be exact). They also have gears for the noteheads. It also turns out that they way the notes are hinged together forms a four-bar mechanism. Different types of mechanisms show up in things like car engines, transmissions, suspension systems, aircraft, doors, computer keyboards, robots, and even instruments like trumpets!