UW’s Robotics and Controls researchers are leaders in the areas of surgical and bio-robotics, haptics, smart cities, and network control systems. They collaborate with and hold secondary appointments in computer science and engineering, bioengineering, and the UW Medical Center, and are active participants in research centers such as the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.
Tactile sensing, biomechanics, biomedical modeling and surgical planning.
Faculty: Blake Hannaford, Samuel Burden
Cloud-based systems, network of sensors, RFIDs, spectrum development and testing.
Faculty: Lillian Ratliff, Linda Bushnell, Baosen Zhang, Maryam Fazel, Akshay Gadre
Telerobotics, virtual reality, mobile device interface and remote surgery.
Faculty: Blake Hannaford
Communication networks, sensors, command controllers, drones, developing-world applications.
Faculty: Radha Poovendran, Linda Bushnell
UW ECE doctoral student Mingfei Chen has been awarded a 2025 Google PhD Fellowship in Machine Perception. This award is one of the most competitive honors for doctoral students in artificial intelligence research today.
This new program supports transfer of research into commercial products through prototyping, customer discovery, and market analysis. Learn how UW ECE-EFP fellows are translating their ideas into impact.
Voltair, a startup co-founded by UW ECE alums Ronan Nopp (BSECE ’25) and Hayden Gosch (BSECE ’25) is innovating drone technology to prevent wildfires from igniting along rural power lines.
Learn about the impact and importance of research at the UW College of Engineering, including work by UW ECE assistant professors Jungwon Choi (left) and Kim Ingraham (right).
UW ECE undergraduate Kyshawn Warren part of NSF-funded team of researchers using eye-tracking technology to help create autonomous systems that can adjust to individual comfort levels.
UW ECE doctoral student Niveditha Kalavakonda is engineering an autonomous robotic assistant for providing surgical suction. This device is at the leading edge of technology and is helping to explore a new field: collaborative human-robot interaction in surgical environments.
