Leila Bridgeman is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. She earned B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Applied Mathematics in 2008 and 2010 from McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, where she completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, earning McGill’s 2016 D.W. Ambridge Prize for outstanding dissertation in the physical sciences and engineering. Her graduate studies involved research semesters at University of Michigan, University of Bern, and University of Victoria, along with an internship at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Boston, MA. She received the Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research in 2023.

Through her research, Leila strives to bridge the gap between theoretical results in robust and optimal control and their use in practice. She explores how the tools of numerical analysis, input-output stability theory, and set invariance can be applied through practical, computationally-tractable algorithms. Resulting publications have considered applications of this work to robotic, process control, and time-delay systems and the development of autonomous ultrasound robotics.

Amy Strong is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. Her research focuses on robust and data driven control of nonlinear systems. She was awarded the Duke University Pratt-Gardner Fellowship in 2021 and is a member of the 2023 cohort of Duke's NSF Traineeship for the Advancement of Surgical Technology. She earned her B.M.E. from Auburn University in 2018. From 2018 to 2021, she worked in the GPS and Vehicle Dynamics Lab at Auburn University, earning her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering.