Alireza Ramezani

Associate Professor,  Electrical and Computer Engineering

Contact

Office

  • 617.373.4027

Related Links

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, Mechanical Engineering (Adviser: J. Grizzle), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2014
  • MS, Mechanical Engineering (Adviser, R. D’Andrea), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), 2010
  • BSc, Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, 2007

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.

SiliconSynapse Lab

Selected Research Projects

Department Research Areas

Selected Publications

  • Sihite, Eric, Kalantari, Arash, Nemovi, Reza, Ramezani, Alireza, Gharib, Morteza (2023). Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) with appendage repurposing for locomotion plasticity enhancement. Nature Communications, 14(1). 10.1038/S41467-023-39018-Y
  • 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

Students

Feb 07, 2025

Spring 2025 PEAK Experiences Awardees for Undergrad Research

Several COE, COS, and Khoury students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of the Spring 2025 PEAK Experiences Awards from Northeastern’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

Alireza Ramezani

Faculty

Nov 15, 2024

Patent for Multi-Modal Robot With Legged and Aerial Capabilities

ECE Associate Professor Alireza Ramezani received a patent for “Morpho-functional robots with legged and aerial modes of locomotion.”

Alireza Ramezani

Faculty

Nov 08, 2024

Ramezani Receives ASME Rising Star Award

ECE Associate Professor Alireza Ramezani receives an ASME Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering Award in recognition of his NSF CAREER Award for advancing robotic functionality for small spaces that is inspired by bat movement.

Alireza Ramezani

In the Media

Oct 02, 2024

Bats’ Weird Wings Inspired This Drone

ECE Associate Professor Alireza Ramezani was featured in the Popular Science article “Bats’ Weird Wings Inspired This Drone.”

Students

Sep 25, 2024

Fall 2024 PEAK Experiences Awardees for Undergrad Research

Several COE, COS, and Khoury students mentored by COE faculty are recipients of the Fall 2024 PEAK Experiences Awards from Northeastern’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

Faculty

Sep 24, 2024

Designing a Bat-Inspired Robot for Confined Space Exploration

ECE Associate Professor Alireza Ramezani developed a bat-inspired robot called Aerobat that can navigate tight spaces, opening up new possibilities for exploration and inspection in confined environments. Ramezani published his research on “A morphology-centered view towards describing bats dynamically versatile wing conformations” in The International Journal of Robotics Research.

Faculty

Jul 23, 2024

Ramezani’s Robotics Research Featured in National Geographic Cover Story

ECE Associate Professor Alireza Ramezani’s research on robots inspired by bats was featured in a National Geographic cover story, “Bats Have Disease-Defying Superpowers. What If We Could Copy Them?“

Alireza Ramezani

Faculty

May 15, 2024

Video Friday: Loco-Manipulation

ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani’s Silicon Synapse Lab was featured in IEEE Spectrum’s “Video Friday: Loco-Manipulation,” their weekly selection of awesome robotics videos.

Undergraduate

May 08, 2024

2024 URF Scholars Recipients

Several engineering students received 2024 URF Scholars Awards from Northeastern’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. URF Scholars are students who are graduating this year and who have earned a PEAK Experiences Award, applied for a distinguished fellowship, or participated in graduate school advising.

Undergraduate

Apr 05, 2024

Ramezani’s Student Selected as NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow

Henry Noyes, an undergraduate mathematics and physics student who works in ECE Assistant Professor Alireza Ramezani’s Silicon Synapse Lab, was selected as a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow for his project on “Autonomous Navigation and Multi-Modal Path Planning in Lunar Craters Using a Modular Snake-like Robot.”

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