Leila Jasmine Bridgeman

Biography

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. She was a recipient of a 2023 ONR Young Investigator Prize.

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 and laser actuated robotics.