People, papers and presentations

A paper by Marcia O’Malley, a Rice professor of mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering, and her colleagues have won the “Best Paper in Journal Award” for publications in 2016 by IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics. The paper, “A Time-Domain Approach to Control of Series Elastic Actuators: Adaptive Torque and Passivity-Based Impedance Control,” details the development of an original approach to robust control of elastic actuators used in robotics. O’Malley’s lab studies robot-assisted rehabilitation for patients. Co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate students Dylan Losey, Andrew Erwin, Craig McDonald and former postdoctoral fellow Fabrizio Sergi.

Bob Stein, the Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science and a fellow at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, was recently featured on a Rice-student made podcast called “In the Loop” to discuss voting in the local elections held earlier this month.