Robotics Institute Post-Doc Named Innovation Fellow

Susie CribbsMonday, September 9, 2019

Robotics Institute post-doc Joe Bartels has been named a 2019 Swartz Center Innovation Fellow.

Joe Bartels, a postdoctoral researcher in the Robotics Institute, was named one of three Innovation Fellows by Carnegie Mellon University's Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.

Founded in 2015, the Swartz Center works with the CMU community to accelerate the process of bringing research innovations and promising ideas to the global marketplace and to help all CMU entrepreneurs tap into the innovation ecosystem. The Innovation Fellows program specifically aims to foster entrepreneurship among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research assistants — the people who work directly with faculty investigators to conduct scientific experiments, solve problems and innovate.

Bartels earned his master's degree and Ph.D. in robotics at CMU, and worked with colleagues in the Illumination and Imaging Lab to create novel depth-imaging systems for use in robotics and automation. These imaging systems include a long-range outdoor depth camera and a fully programmable 3D light curtain device. As a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow, he applied this research to 3D sensing for planetary rovers. Bartels now hopes to commercialize this technology for broad use in robotics, including self-driving cars, industrial manufacturing and mobile robots.

Other 2019 Innovation Fellows include Jooli Han, a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Engineering Department; and Bruce Wu, a research scientist in the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation.

The Innovation Fellows program was created in 2014 and has awarded 25 fellowships to date. For more on the program and its recipients, visit the Swartz Center website.

For More Information

Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu<br>Virginia Alvino Young | 412-268-8356 | vay@cmu.edu