J. Sean Humbert

Biography

J. Sean Humbert is the McLagan Family Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis, and MS / Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Caltech. His main research focus is perception, reduction and feedback principles in biology. Nervous systems have evolved to make useful reductions of sensory-rich high dimensional data, forming simple representations that allow animals to perform well with limited computation in the presence of uncertainty. His laboratory works with biologists to apply control- and information-theoretic tools to formalize these principles in small animals such as insects, providing insight into the biology and resulting in novel, robust and computationally efficient solutions for small-scale engineered systems. Dr. Humbert is a member of the Board on Army Science and Technology of the National Academies, is the recipient of the AIAA National Capital Section Hal Andrews Young Scientist/Engineer Award and an ARO Young Investigator Award. He is Director of the MAST-CTA Center on Microsystem Mechanics, Co-Director of the AFOSR Center of Excellence on Nature Inspired Flight Technologies, and a member of the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) at CU Boulder.