News & Events

News & Events

FASt Lab in the News

  1. Nov. 2024 – NREL highlights our collaboration to develop flexible ocean wave energy converters. Great job Isabel!
  2. Oct. 2023 – FASt Lab is part of an Air Force Center of Excellence titled AEROMORPH, which will advance the sense-assess-response of high-speed morphing vehicles. The FASt Lab will investigate the use of vibratory dynamics for mechanical computation.
  3. Nov. 2022 – “The Nebula: Improving Coastal Monitoring one Robotic Fish at a Time”. University of Florida Center for Coastal Solutions (CCS).

Lab Events

September 2024 – We made some waves at the 2024 ASME Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures, and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS) Conference in Atlanta, Georgia!

  • Isabel and Shan both gave great presentations!
  • Trevor gave his first conference presentation! 

April 2024 – Our robotic fish, Nebula, had the honor to visit the US Senate and meet NSF Director Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan.

We participated in a robotics demo day hosted by the Senate AI Caucus in DC.

We represented the University of Florida alongside our colleague Dr. Eric Du and his lab (Civil & Coastal Engineering) 

December 2023 – Celebrating the end of the semester with the APRILab & Smart Autonomy Labs!

November 2023 – Shan passed her qualifying exam titled “Harnessing Morphing Mechanical Structures as Physical Reservoir Computers”. Congrats on becoming a PhD Candidate, Shan!

Oct. 10, 2023 – Miguel successfully defending his Master’s Thesis titled “Stiffness Variation of a Bio-inspired Propulsor due to Localized In-plane Forcing”. Congrats Miguel!

Sept. 13, 2023 – A great showing at the ASME Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures, and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS) Conference in Austin, TX!

  • Isabel won the best paper award in the Bio-inspired Systems track for her SMASIS 2022 paper “The Role of Compliance in Generating Traveling Waves on a Bio-Inspired Flexible Propulsor”
  • Shan presented her first conference presentation!
  • Nebula came in 3rd place in the student hardware competition!

Aug. 24, 2023 – Isabel passed her qualifying exam titled “Soft Swimming Robots with Multi-Functional Artificial Muscles”. Congrats on becoming a PhD Candidate, Isabel!