Mitra Hartmann
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Mitra J.Z. Hartmann is a professor of
mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...
and
biomedical engineering Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic). BME is also traditionally logical sciences ...
at the
Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Established in 1909, the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science is one of twelve constituent schools at Northwestern University. Most engineering classes are held in the Technological Institute (1942), which students commo ...
at
Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...
. She specializes in
robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...
, sensory acquisition behaviors, sensorimotor integration, and neuroethology. Her lab focuses on translating sensory signals felt by
whiskers Vibrissae (; singular: vibrissa; ), more generally called Whiskers, are a type of stiff, functional hair used by mammals to touch, sense their environment. These hairs are finely specialised for this purpose, whereas other types of hair are c ...
to robotics.


Career

Hartmann earned a
B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...
in applied and engineering physics at
Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
and a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
in
integrative neuroscience Integrative neuroscience is the study of neuroscience that works to unify functional organization data to better understand complex structures and behaviors. The relationship between structure and function, and how the regions and functions connec ...
from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She was a computational neurobiology postdoc at Caltech and a bio-computing postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Lab. She joined the faculty at Northwestern in 2003 and won the McCormick School of Engineering Teacher of the Year Award in 2009, 2010, and 2011. She became an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow in 2017 and is an editorial board member for the Journal of Neurophysiology, a programming committee member for the Barrels Society, and a
National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...
SMI study section member.


Research

Hartmann currently focuses on animal
whiskers Vibrissae (; singular: vibrissa; ), more generally called Whiskers, are a type of stiff, functional hair used by mammals to touch, sense their environment. These hairs are finely specialised for this purpose, whereas other types of hair are c ...
and how information about touch is sent from the whisker to the brain. This is multi-disciplinary research and her lab is made up of neuroscientists, mechanical engineers, biomedical engineers, and civil engineers, among others. In April 2021, she published a paper in '' PLOS Computational Biology'' about how whiskers bend in an S shape when whisking and signals are transmitted from the base of the follicle, activated when the whisker is pushed against it, to the brain. This research may eventually be able to be applied to helping people with brain injuries or who have suffered from strokes regain the ability to walk. She currently holds four patents:Northwestern University
"Mitra Hartmann"
''Northwestern University'', n.d.. Retrieved on 13 June 2021.
*Sensing device with whisker elements (US 7,774,951, 2010) *Object profile sensing (US 8,109,007, 2012) *Sensing device with whisker elements (US 8,448,514, 2013) *Systems, methods, and apparatus for reconstruction of 3-D object morphology, position, orientation and texture using an array of tactile sensors (US 8,504,500, 2013)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartmann, Mitra Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Northwestern University faculty Cornell University alumni California Institute of Technology alumni American mechanical engineers American biomedical engineers Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering American women scientists American women engineers Behavioral neuroscientists Neurophysiologists 21st-century American women