Hello! I am Divya Ramesh
I am a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. I am a member of Lauder Lab which is led by Prof. George V. Lauder.
My research focuses on understanding animal locomotion and bio-inspired robotics. My current work is in studying fish locomotion and fish robotics. I have experience in systematic study of animal and robot locomotion, developing tools and methods, building robots and sensors, and reinforcement learning techniques.
Education & Research
I pursued my Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from 2019 to 2024 under the supervision of Prof. Chen Li at Terradynamics Lab from Johns Hopkins University (JHU). My research focused on studying and understanding animal and robot locomotion on 3-D complex terrain and wet flowable substrates. This work was divided into two parts based on the environment: (1) developing a sensorized snake robot to study the use of tactile sensing in snakes to traverse complex 3-D terrain and (2) studying and understanding amphibious fish locomotion on mud with mud strength variation. During my doctoral degree program, I also received my MSE degree in Robotics from the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics at JHU in 2024.
Prior to this, I pursued my MSE degree in Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) between 2017 and 2019. During this time, I worked as a Graduate Student Research Assistant in Kod*lab under Prof. Daniel E. Koditschek. At the lab, I investigated the behavior and dynamics of legged robot during obstacle interaction. I received my B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from VIT University, Vellore, India in 2017.
Publications, Awards & Honors
My work has been published in IEEE RA-L (presented at ICRA 2020) and presented at ICRA 2022. 2 journal preprints are currently under development from my Ph.D. research. 11 conference abstracts were presented at conferences including APS and SICB.
I have been shortlisted (8 finalists out of 210 talks selected) for the Best Student Paper finalist (Division of Comparative Biomechanics) at the SICB Annual Meeting in 2023. I have also received a Mechanical Engineering Departmental Fellowship for the first year of my Ph.D.
Mentorship & Service
As part of my academic development, I have had the opportunity to mentor and teach students, take leadership roles, and participate in professional, volunteer, and outreach services. I have mentored a total of 32 students at Terradynamics Lab (31 students) and Kod*lab (1 student) including 1 PhD student, 14 master’s students, 10 undergraduate students, and 7 high school students in animal studies, bioinspired robot design and prototyping, and tools and methods development. I was also a teaching assistant for 2 courses during my Ph.D. at JHU and 1 course during my Master’s at UPenn.
I have served as Social Chair for the LCSR Graduate Student Association during my Ph.D. and as Student Head for the IEEE Power and Energy Society VIT Student Chapter during my undergraduate studies. I have taken other roles in committees, panels, and chapters during my Ph.D and undergraduate studies.
Selected Coursework
I have taken courses in various topics during my academic studies. Here is a list of selected coursework from my Ph.D. at JHU and Master’s at UPenn:
Robotics and AI: Nonlinear control and planning in robotics, Foundations of reinforcement learning, Learning in robotics, Machine learning
Dynamics, Control, and Signal Processing: Locomotion dynamics & control, Intro. to nonlinear dynamics and chaos, Dynamics of robots and spacecraft, Control systems for robotics, System identification, Linear systems theory, Digital signal processing
Electronics: Analog integrated circuits, Mixed signal design and model
For more information, please see my CV.