Sean Thomas

We built a gripper that is lighter and faster than conventional designs! By combining flexures, shape memory alloys, and a bistable mechanism, we turn slow smart materials into fast, energy-dense actuators. The SMA only switches states! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

Excited to be attending the #ASB2025 conference! If you’ll be there and want to connect, chat research, or grab coffee — feel free to reach out. Looking forward to meeting new faces and catching up with familiar ones!

When athletes suffer serious injuries to their knee ligaments, the road to recovery can be long, and some never return to the game. Understanding exactly how ligaments fail is essential to improving prevention and treatment, but studying these injuries in living people is difficult. Researchers have developed and validated a new robotic system that simulates natural knee movements with high precision using post-mortem human subject knees. By integrating advanced bone motion data from dynamic biplanar radiography, they were able to replicate motions like walking, running, jumping, and injury events to directly study ligament damage under controlled conditions. This advancement could unlock deeper insights into how and why knee injuries happen and bring us closer to better ways to keep athletes in the game. 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲: lnkd.in/ePPncH8q 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆: A Robotic Clamped-Kinematic System to Study Knee Ligament Injury 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘀: Ophelie Herve, Will Flanagan, Jake Kanetis, Bailey Mooney, Thomas Kremen, David R. McAllister, and Tyler Clites @UCLA @UCLAHealth @dgsomucla @UCLAMechAeroEng @BioEngUCLA @ThomasKremenMD @TylerClites 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘂𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁: lnkd.in/g6_6wwEu

@RichardHanania PhD now is basically a program to get a US Visa. Which for many people is still a decent deal in spite of the abuse. Lower-tier programs where the PhD is even more useless are almost all filled with international students

🎉 Exciting news! My IROS paper on implantable artificial muscles is now online! Explore the future of robotics and bio-machine integration. Check out the groundbreaking research here: doi.org/10.1109/IROS55… Grateful for my amazing colleagues! 🙌 #IROS2023 #ArtificialMuscles

Inspiring time at #Neuroscience2023! Engaging talks, insightful discussions, and always a blast spending time with my brilliant colleagues and friends. Grateful for the opportunity to learn and share ideas. Looking forward to future collaborations! #PennState

🚨Put on your 🎧 a new #JNeurophysiol podcast has been published! 👉JNP Micro Podcasts ”Four Questions”: Task-dependent negotiations of #bimanual #coordination 🖱ow.ly/3s9550Q45sh Many 👏 to @Nick_Kitchen & @JisungYuk for participating in our series! #AcademicTwitter

@JonasRubenson of @pennstatekines has a new article in @SciRobotics looking at how bio-mimicry leads to improved robotic limbs and assistive devices. Learn more: ow.ly/GLyH50IxAqE

A new robot with emu-inspired legs—named "BirdBot"—can walk without motor actuators or active control, unlike many existing legged robots that rely on real-time feedback to adjust their movements. Learn more in @SciRobotics: fcld.ly/octjxl6

@AelesJ @JonasRubenson @PSUBiomechLab @huckinstitutes Well I finally figured out how to change it. Why is Twitter making me feel so old.