Scholarship Focus Areas and Research Labs

HEATlab

The Human Experience & Agent Teamwork lab (HEATlab) creates new techniques for human-robot teaming—the flexible navigation and coordination of complex, inter-related activities in shared spaces. Current projects include human-robot trust and planning fluid human-robot interactions.

Don-Labs

The Donnelly laser physics lab studies the interaction of high-intensity laser light with novel microstuctured targets. Topics include laser-driven nuclear fusion and the heating mechanisms which allow laser energy to be absorbed on short timescales by solid-density materials.

Bee Lab

The Bee Lab studies how groups of animals evolve to coordinate behavior. Using mathematical models, agent-based simulation, computer vision and lab and field experiments with bees and ants, the lab explores how communication shapes collective behavior.

LAIR

The Lab for Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics (LAIR) focuses on multi-robot systems and their applications in the field. Current topics include shark tracking, shipwreck detection and mapping, multi-robot population tracking and pollution mapping.

PoSM Lab

The Physics of Soft Matter Lab studies the physical principles of soft material deformation. Current projects include green technologies that use soft materials to address our environmental footprint, such as water-processible polymers and the elastodynamics of mechanical batteries.

Tryp Lab

The Schulz Lab uses the African trypanosome as a model system to understand how organisms reprogram themselves in response to changes in their environment. With African trypanosomes being the causative agent of sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in cattle, we aim to understand how the parasites adapt to different environments in the fly and mammalian bloodstream, with an eye toward manipulating this adaption to help fight disease.

Bush Lab

The Bush Lab works within the area of microbial genome evolution and has developed an approach to reconstructing the history of genomic island insertions in clades of closely related microbes. They are currently working on improving various aspects of this method.

FILM Lab

The Flow Imaging Lab at Mudd (FILM) experimentally studies biological and bioinspired fluid mechanics, and mechanically recreates swimming behaviors seen in nature to identify new strategies for underwater vehicle propulsion.

Vosburg Lab

The Vosburg lab aims to make molecules in good, beautiful, green, and clever ways. A current example is the formation of seven bonds and two rings in a single operation. Many of our target molecules have medicinal applications.

Music Composition

Bill Alves is a composer known for his work with computer animation, electroacoustic music, alternate tunings, and gamelan. He has also published on world music traditions and the music of Lou Harrison.

ACE Lab

The Analog Circuit Engineering (ACE) lab studies the integration of quantum, mechanical and chemical devices into modern integrated circuits.

Fandell Lab

In the Fandell Lab, I make photographs, videos, collages, sculptures, sounds, drawings, performances and text based works, and have had the opportunity to exhibit nationally and internationally at diverse venues, from artist run galleries to major museums. I have taken part in residencies in Austria, Ireland, and the US, and have received awards from the Tiffany Foundation and Artadia.

Mayeri Lab

My process for making art begins with researching a new field. For one multiyear project, Primate Cinema, I interviewed a bunch of primatologists including Jane Goodall, trained people in Los Angeles to act like baboons, made films for a chimpanzee audience in Scotland, and observed squirrel monkeys at a breeding center in France.

The Molecular Engineering Lab

The Molecular Engineering Lab at Harvey Mudd College designs engineered systems at the molecular level to address emerging challenges in the water crisis and human health at a global scale.