Taekyoung Kim is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Robotic Matter Laboratory at Northwestern University. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University. His research interests lie in soft robotics, mechatronics, soft actuators and sensors, architected soft materials, soft 3D structure fabrication, embodied intelligence, and physical human-robot-environment interaction. He has focused on implementing physically intelligent soft-rigid hybrid robotic systems by synergistically integrating soft sensing and actuation technologies with existing robotic platforms. He received a Global Ph.D. Fellowship from the National Research Foundation of Korea during his Ph.D. He also received the Best Conference Paper Award at IEEE RoboSoft 2019 and was nominated as a Rising Star at IEEE RoboSoft 2025.

Currently, he is developing 3D-printable soft actuators and sensors and also implementing artificial musculoskeletal robotic systems and soft legged robots capable of adaptive behaviors for real-world autonomy through embodied learning.  

Northwestern University, United States

  Ryan Truby is the June and Donald Brewer Junior Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. His research broadly aims to advance machine intelligence by material design. He and his team in the Robotic Matter Lab are currently developing novel soft actuators and sensors, rapid multimaterial 3D printing methods, and machine learning-based control strategies for soft sensorized robots. Ryan’s research also includes work in 3D printing vascularized tissue constructs, soft electronics, artificial muscles, and architected materials. Prior to Northwestern, Ryan was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and he received his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University. Ryan is the recipient of a DARPA Director’s Fellowship, DARPA Young Faculty Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the Outstanding Paper Award at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, an Inaugural 2018 Schmidt Science Fellowship, and the Gold Award for Graduate Students from the Materials Research Society. He was named a 2025 ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering and a 2023 Searle Fellow at Northwestern University.

University of Michigan, United States

Xiaonan (Sean) Huang is an Assistant Professor in Robotics at the University of Michigan. He earned both a BS and a BA in Mechanical Engineering and Japanese from the Harbin Institute of Technology, followed by an MS and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Huang has contributed significantly to the robotics community as an associate editor for the IROS, RoboSoft, and BioRob conferences, and as a guest editor for the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI. His research is centered on the development of robust soft robotic systems capable of efficient locomotion in challenging environments, leveraging the seamless integration of multifunctional soft materials, shape-morphing and stiffness-tunable soft actuators, multimodal soft sensors, alongside the advancement of precise control systems, efficient Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques, and onboard learning algorithms to enhance robotic agility and intelligence. 

Elysium Robotics, United States

EunBi Oh is a Senior Materials Scientist at Elysium Robotics, where she develops electroactive materials for soft electromechanical actuators. Her work sits at the intersection of polymer chemistry, additive manufacturing, and soft robotics. EunBi earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University under the supervision of Chad A. Mirkin, where she pioneered an electrochemical lithographic technique for nanoscale metallic patterning and explored stimuli-responsive hydrogels for cell–material interactions. During her postdoctoral work with Ryan L. Truby in the Robotic Matter Lab, she developed 3D-printed multifunctional iontronic composites that integrate sensing, current control, and actuation within a single material—opening new possibilities for adaptive soft machines.

Her research has been recognized with honors including the ACS PMSE Future Faculty Scholar, IIN Outstanding Researcher Award, ACS CAS Future Leaders Top 100, and NextProf Nexus Fellow. Her current research centers on dielectric elastomers and conductive composites for artificial muscles and bioinspired robotic systems, pushing the boundaries of what soft, architected materials can do.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States

Wenjie Zhou is a materials scientist whose training spans molecular and colloidal synthesis (Ph.D., Northwestern), architected and topological materials (postdoc, Caltech), and computation. Moving from programming interactions among molecules and nanoparticles to studying how structure governs behavior at larger scales, Zhou developed a unifying view: architecture and connectivity can be treated as primary design variables, alongside composition. This perspective now guides the Intelligent Matter Lab in MatSE at Illinois.

At Illinois, Zhou collaborates across MatSE, MRL, MechSE, and beyond on problems where clear principles at one scale can inform design at another. The group blends experiment, modeling, and AI to translate fundamentals from mathematics and physics into robust material behaviors and practical demonstrators, while training researchers who are fluent in synthesis, fabrication, measurement, and theory.