Alireza Ramezani
Assistant Professor,
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Contact
- a.ramezani@northeastern.edu
- 514 ISEC
360 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Office
- 617.373.4027
Research Focus
Design and development of robots with nontrivial morphologies; Analysis and closed-loop feedback design of nonlinear systems; Robot locomotion (legged & fluidic-based); Robotics-inspired biology
Education
- PhD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2014
Honors & Awards
Two cover articles of Science (Robotics) Magazine
One Science Article in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Science Magazine Altmetric
Research highlights at Nature
Winner of 2022 NASA’s Game Changing Program Award
Winner of 2020 NASA’s Game Changing Program Award
Recipient of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Faculty Research Program Position (Summer 2022)
Professional Affiliations
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME)
- Climbing and Walking Robots Association (CLAWAR)
Research Overview
Design and development of robots with nontrivial morphologies; Analysis and closed-loop feedback design of nonlinear systems; Robot locomotion (legged & fluidic-based); Robotics-inspired biology
SiliconSynapse Lab
At “SiliconSynapse Lab”, we design bio-inspired robots, i.e., we are inspired by biology. Our works reside at the intersection of control theory and robotics, the intersection of theory and experiment. That said, the names ‘’Silicon’’ and ‘’Synapse’’ carried by the lab’s name are the fundamental components of the sensory feedback chains in robots and biological systems.
Selected Research Projects
- Design/Control of Mars Multi-modal Morphing (M4) Rover
- – co-Principal Investigator, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
- Designing Tumbling Snake-inspired Rovers for the Exploration of the Moon’s Shackleton Crater
- – Principal Investigator, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s (STMD) Program
- Design, Flight Control, and Autonomous Navigation of Bioinspired Morphing Micro Aerial Vehicles for Operation in Confined Spaces
- – Principal Investigator, NSF Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR)
- Teaching Aerial Robots to Perch Like a Bat via AI-guided Design and Control
- – co-Principal Investigator, NSF National Robotics Initiative
- SCOUT and DOGHOUSE
- – Principal Investigator and supervisor of NU team, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- E. Sihite, A. Ramezani, ”Enforcing nonholonomic constraints in Aerobat, a roosting flapping wing model,” Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, December 8-11, 2020.
- E. Sihite, P. Kelly, A. Ramezani, ”Computational Structure Design of a Bio-inspired Armwing Mechanism,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2020. Also accepted in IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Las Vegas, NV, October 25-29, 2020
- P. Dangol, A. Ramezani, N. Jalili, ”Performance satisfaction in Midget, a thruster-assisted bipedal robot,” American Control Conference (ACC), Denver, CO, July 1-3, 2020.
- A. Ramezani, ”Towards flapping flight upside-down landing through differential manipulation of inertial dynamics,” Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Paris, France, May 31 to June 4, 2020.
- P. Dangol, A. Ramezani, ”Performance and Robustness Satisfaction in a Thruster-assisted Legged Robot,” International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Berlin, Germany, July 12-17, 2020.
- A. C. B. de Oliveira, A. Ramezani, ”Thruster-assisted Center Manifold Shaping in Bipedal Legged Locomotion,” International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), Boston, MA, July 6-10, 2020.
- A. Ramezani, S.U. Ahmed, J.E. Hoff, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, Describing aerial locomotion of an Articulated MAV with Stable Periodic Orbits, Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems: The 6th Int’l. Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 2017, 394-405
- S.U. Ahmed, A. Ramezani, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, From Rousettus Aegyptiacus Landing to Robotic Landing: Regulation of CG-CP Distance Using a Nonlinear Closed-Loop Feedback, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017, 3560-3567
- A. Ramezani, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, A Biomimetic Robotic Platform to Study Flight Specializations of Bats, Science (Robotics-AAAS), 2(3), 2017
- J.E. Hoff, A. Ramezani, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, Synergistic Design of a Bio-Inspired Micro Aerial Vehicle with Articulated Wings, Robotics Science and Systems Conference (RSS), 2016
- A. Ramezani, X. Shi, S.J. Chung, S. Hutchinson, Bat Bot (B2), a Biologically Inspired Flying Machine, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016, 3219-3226
- A. Ramezani, J. Hurst, K.A. Hamed, J.W. Grizzle, Performance Analysis and Feedback Control of Atrias, a 3D Bipedal Robot, ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems Measurement and Control, 136(2), 2014, 21012
- H.W. Park, A. Ramezani, J.W. Grizzle, A Finite State Machine for Accommodating Unexpected Large Ground Height Variations in Bipedal Robot Walking, IEEE Transactions on Robotics,29(2), 2013, 331-345
Nov 18, 2022
NU Wins 1st Place at 2022 NASA BIG IDEA Competition
A Northeastern University student team, advised by ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, won the prestigious Artemis Award, the top honor at NASA’s 2022 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge for their COBRA: Crater Observing Bio-inspired Rolling Articulator.
Oct 07, 2022
Announcing Fall 2022 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Several engineering students and science students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of Northeastern’s Fall 2022 PEAK Experiences Awards. This extraordinary group of students is taking on a range of exciting projects, from exploring axolotl limb regeneration to building a snake-inspired robot to understanding accessibility on Broadway. ASCENT AWARDS Justin Almendral COE’24, “Wearable Art” Mentor: […]
Jul 01, 2022
Ramezani Selected for JPL Faculty Fellowship Research Program
ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani was selected as a participant in the Faculty Fellowship Research Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
May 26, 2022
Designing a Bat-Inspired Robot for Operation in Confined Spaces
ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, in collaboration with Khoury Assistant Professor Lawson Wong and Koushil Sreenath from the University of California-Berkeley, is leading a $1M NSF grant for “Design, Flight Control, and Autonomous Navigation of Bioinspired Morphing Micro Aerial Vehicles for Operation in Confined Spaces.”
May 18, 2022
Announcing Summer 2022 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Several engineering students and science students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of Northeastern’s Summer 2022 PEAK Experiences Awards.
Mar 14, 2022
SEDS Student Group Finalist in NASA BIG Idea Challenge for Innovative Robot Snake Design
A Northeastern University student team, advised by Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani, electrical and computer engineering, was one of seven university teams selected as finalists in the 2022 NASA’s BIG Idea Challenge. The team’s project, titled “COBRA: Crater Observing Bio-inspired Rolling Articulator,” received $174K in funds to further develop and test the technologies over the next 10 months. COBRA is a snake-like design for their robot which will allow it to traverse the extreme terrains on the moon’s surface.
Jun 07, 2021
Summer 2021 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Congratulations to the COE student recipients of the Summer 2021 PEAK Experiences Awards. The PEAK Experiences Awards are a progressively structured sequence of opportunities designed to support learners as they continue climbing to new heights of achievement in undergraduate research and creative endeavor throughout their Northeastern journeys. BASE CAMP AWARDS Ana Salichs, E’22, “Colorimetric Assays […]
Apr 20, 2021
FY22 TIER 1 Award Recipients
Congratulations to the 17 COE faculty and affiliates who were recipients of FY22 TIER 1 Interdisciplinary Research Seed Grants for 11 different projects.
Feb 18, 2020
NU Team Selected for NASA’s Big Idea Challenge
Congratulations to the Northeastern team that was selected as an awardee of the Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.
Jan 27, 2020
Spring 2020 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Congratulations to the COE student recipients of the Spring 2020 PEAK Experiences Awards. The PEAK Experiences Awards are a progressively structured sequence of opportunities designed to support learners as they continue climbing to new heights of achievement in undergraduate research and creative endeavor throughout their Northeastern journeys. BASE CAMP AWARDS Developing HPLC Methods for Characterizing […]