Category: Team

Amanda is a senior at Bucknell University majoring in Computer Engineering and minoring in Legal Studies. She is a Presidential Fellow and has been a member on Professor Buffinton’s soft-robotics research team as part of her fellowship since August 2017. She has held multiple roles on this project at different times and has completed a variety of tasks including creating FREEs, using Arduino to test FREE rotation, and automating the FREE creation process. Currently, she is working on creating a 3D printed part in SolidWorks that can hold the FREEs around a human arm.

Post graduation, Amanda will be going into the field of business consulting. The office she plans to work in is small, similar to a start-up, so while her main focus is business, she will also be able to work with technological platforms such as Salesforce and AWS.

Outside of her research in soft-robotics, Amanda is involved in Her Campus, Greek Life, and other engineering groups such as SWE and ACM.

Ryan Bailis is a current junior at Bucknell University studying Computer Engineering and Management. He has been involved with the soft-robotics research lab since January 2019 where he has been studying the dynamic response of a Fiber Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosure (FREE). Through experimentation and mathematical modeling, his work has focused on altering material properties such as length, thickness, mass, and winding angle to characterize the dynamic properties of a FREE. As a result of his work, the natural frequency, log decrement, and damping ratio of a single FREE have been experimentally measured, allowing for the creation of a realistic model that explains the motion of a FREE as it moves about the workspace. These tests, performed in March and April 2019, have largely shown that a FREE can be modeled as spring-mass-damper system with rotational natural frequencies inversely related to mass moment of inertia. 

Following his dynamic response research, Bailis has designed a custom two-camera imaging system that is able to perform a comprehensive mapping of the workspace. Using vision and pressure data, a control system that allows for real-time user control via intuitive input, tracking with reduced vibration, and adjustment for variances in the physical characteristics of FREEs has been developed. Future work will largely focus on improving this control system and developing new methods to measure the dynamic response of the FREE as the user interacts with the FREE module.

Outside of soft-robotics, Bailis is interested in musical performance having played the cello in numerous chamber groups and the Bucknell University Symphony. In addition, his interest in engineering and management has led him to study entrepreneurship, leadership, and business development. In the future, Ryan hopes to bridge his interests with music, entrepreneurship, and technology by venturing an innovative start-up company and working to develop his passion for interdisciplinary projects.

Devin Whalen is a junior majoring in electrical engineering with a concentration in physical electronics, a minor in physics, and a minor in math. Devin is part of the Presidential Fellows program at Bucknell and excited to be returning to the soft robotics research team this semester. Devin’s interests outside of engineering include painting, singing, playing guitar, and arranging music.

Keith W. Buffinton is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Bucknell University.  Prof. Buffinton received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering summa cum laude from Tufts University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.  Following his graduate studies, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland.  He has been at Bucknell since 1987.  From 2001 through 2004 he served as co-director of Bucknell’s Institute for Leadership in Technology and Management and from 2003 through 2007 as Associate Dean of the College of Engineering.  In 2009, he was named Interim Dean of Bucknell’s College of Engineering and in 2011 was selected in a national search to become Dean of Engineering, a position he held through 2016.  From 2017 to 2019, he served as Special Assistant to the Provost for Engineering Collaborations, a position in which he was responsible for the development and enhancement of external academic partnerships and programs related to the College of Engineering.  In 2003, Prof. Buffinton received Bucknell’s Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and in 2015 was selected as the “Faculty Member of the Year” by the Bucknell University Chapter of the National Residence Hall Honorary.  During sabbaticals from Bucknell, he has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Rochester, Stanford University, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Professor Buffinton’s scholarly interests range across the areas of mechanical design, systems thinking, entrepreneurially minded learning, and his primary research focus, the dynamics and control of robotic systems.  He has authored or co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed articles that have been published in technical journals and conference proceedings, for which he has been recognized with 3 best paper awards.  Beyond the teaching awards from Bucknell mentioned above, he has received numerous awards for his project work and leadership, including the “Star Performers Award for Innovation” presented by the Small Business Development Center of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2000, the award for “Outstanding Achievement in Mechanical Engineering Practice” from the Tufts University Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2004, the inaugural Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network Dean’s Award in recognition of “leadership to advance entrepreneurial engineering at Bucknell and across KEEN” from the Kern Family Foundation in 2013, and the Charles H. Coder Entrepreneurial Leadership Award “in recognition of transformational leadership and vision for the ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship at Bucknell University” in 2014 from the Bucknell Small Business Development Center.  He has been the principal or co-principal investigator for over $4.2 million in federal, state, and foundation grants from a range of funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Ben Franklin Technology Center of Pennsylvania, and the Kern Family Foundation.  As Dean of Engineering, he particularly sought to enhance support for students coming from under-resourced backgrounds through the creation of the Engineering Success Alliance.  He is a former member of the Rural Business Innovation Corporation Board of Directors, the Executive Board of the American Society of Engineering Education Engineering Deans Council as well as past chair of the American Association of Engineering Societies Engineering Education Working Group