Before joining the mechanical engineering faculty at UCSD in the fall of 2014, he was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. He received the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering with a minor in computer science from Cornell University in 2009 and 2011, respectively. He received the B. Eng. degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University in Montreal in 2005. His research interests include biologically inspired robotics and design, origami-inspired fabrication, self-assembly, and soft robotics, and his work has appeared in articles in top scientific journals including Science and Nature.