Truby Team Receives DARPA Director’s Fellowship to Advance Robotic Materials Research

Northwestern Engineering’s Ryan Truby and his team members received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director’s Fellowship, which is presented to selected DARPA Young Faculty Awardees. 

Truby is the June and Donald Brewer Junior Professor and assistant professor of materials science and engineering and mechanical engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering. The fellowship extends work on Truby’s 2023 Young Faculty Award for his project “Biocompatible Soft Batteries via Bundles of Axon-Inspired, Ionogel Composite Fibers.”

This is believed to be the first time a DARPA Director’s Fellowship has been awarded to a Northwestern team.

Along with Truby, the team includes members of his Robotic Matter Lab: Alexander Kane, a PhD candidate in materials science and engineering; and Eric Yang, a PhD student in materials science and engineering.

The Robotic Matter Lab designs material systems – or robotic materials – that provide bioinspired devices and robots unprecedented capabilities via novel material forms and functions. Its research programs focus on three core themes in pursuit of this mission: design, fabrication, and control of robotic materials and soft robots built from them.

Truby is a core faculty member of the Center for Robotics and Biosystems and is a faculty affiliate with both the Northwestern Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and the NSF Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity Engineering Research Center (HAND ERC).

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