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Head of AMBER Lab

Dr. Aaron D. Ames

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Aaron D. Ames is the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology.   Prior to joining Caltech, he was an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  Dr. Ames received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of St. Thomas in 2001, and he received a M.A. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2006.  He served as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Control and Dynamical Systems at Caltech from 2006 to 2008, and began is faculty career at Texas A&M University in 2008.  At UC Berkeley, he was the recipient of the 2005 Leon O. Chua Award for achievement in nonlinear science and the 2006 Bernard Friedman Memorial Prize in Applied Mathematics. Dr. Ames received the NSF CAREER award in 2010, and is the recipient of the 2015 Donald P. Eckman Award recognizing an outstanding young engineer in the field of automatic control.  His research interests span the areas of robotics, nonlinear control and hybrid systems, with a special focus on applications to bipedal robotic walking—both formally and through experimental validation.  His lab designs, builds and tests novel bipedal robots, humanoids and prostheses with the goal of achieving human-like bipedal robotic locomotion and translating these capabilities to robotic assistive devices.  

Post-Docs and Research Engineers

Graduate Students

  • Wenlong Ma, PhD Student, Caltech
  • Jake Reher, PhD Student, Caltech
  • Eric Ambrose, PhD Student, Caltech
  • Rachel Gehlhar, PhD Student, Caltech
  • Thomas Gurriet, PhD Student, Caltech (co-advised with Eric Feron)
  • Li Wang, PhD Student, Georgia Tech (co-advised with Magnus Egerstedt)
  • Michael Zeagler, MS Student, TAMU

Alumni

Students
Research Faculty/Engineers