Daniel S. Drew
Assistant Professor,
Electrical & Computer Engineering,
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Previously:
Assistant Prof., ECE, University of Utah
Postdoc, Stanford, Mechanical Eng.
PhD, UC Berkeley, Electrical Eng.
email me: ddrew at hawaii.edu
In the near future, swarms of millimeter scale robots will be vital and common tools in industrial, commercial, and
personal settings. The research effort to get us there is inherently interdisciplinary and represents a tremendous
opportunity for collaboration, for training a new generation of interdisciplinary investigators, and for forging new
ties between the worlds of industry, academia, and design; I look forward to pushing it forward.
I am always interested in talking to students who are looking for research opportunities. Feel free to reach out to me directly with some background and a CV!
I'm a huge sci-fi (and everything else) reader. Here's a link to my GoodReads page. For other fun I like to do things outside, cook, and play videogames. I wish there was a GoodReads for videogames to share, but it would probably be embarrassing. I've also done a fair amount of both solo and group world traveling and look forward to a lifetime of more. Now I'm learning to surf, and learning every day how to be a parent to my toddler.
I received my B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2013. My research while there included work on electromagnetic railguns (with Prof. Hardus Odendaal) and polymer-metal nanoparticle compounds for energy efficient mechanical switching (with Profs. Vladimir Bulovic and Jeff Lang, during a summer at MIT). I began the MS/PhD program at UC Berkeley in Fall 2013 with a MEMS concentration. I was also awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2013.
For my PhD, I worked with Professor Kris Pister on ionocraft, flying microrobots powered by atmospheric ion engines. I also did some work with Professor Bjoern Hartmann on developing novel systems for debugging in the field of HCI. I was awarded an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship to do a postdoc with Professor Sean Follmer at Stanford on human-robot interaction and exploring new strategies for turning centimeter-scale robots into useful tools. I worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah in Electrical and Computer Engineering for a few years, enjoying membership in the fantastic UofU Robotics Center, skiing when possible, and having a kid. I since left for warmer climes, starting as an Assistant Professor in Electircal and Computer Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2024. Here's a link to my lab website. Look, you're all caught up.
I like to think about where we (academics, roboticists, humans) are going. Send me an email with your wild dreams of the future; I want to hear it all.
I received my B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2013. My research while there included work on electromagnetic railguns (with Prof. Hardus Odendaal) and polymer-metal nanoparticle compounds for energy efficient mechanical switching (with Profs. Vladimir Bulovic and Jeff Lang, during a summer at MIT). I began the MS/PhD program at UC Berkeley in Fall 2013 with a MEMS concentration. I was also awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2013.
For my PhD, I worked with Professor Kris Pister on ionocraft, flying microrobots powered by atmospheric ion engines. I also did some work with Professor Bjoern Hartmann on developing novel systems for debugging in the field of HCI. I was awarded an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship to do a postdoc with Professor Sean Follmer at Stanford on human-robot interaction and exploring new strategies for turning centimeter-scale robots into useful tools. I worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah in Electrical and Computer Engineering for a few years, enjoying membership in the fantastic UofU Robotics Center, skiing when possible, and having a kid. I since left for warmer climes, starting as an Assistant Professor in Electircal and Computer Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2024. Here's a link to my lab website. Look, you're all caught up.
I like to think about where we (academics, roboticists, humans) are going. Send me an email with your wild dreams of the future; I want to hear it all.