News
December 12th, 2022
Our lab renovations are complete! So grateful for our awesome new lab space, furniture, and equipment!
December 9th, 2022
To celebrate the end of the semester, we had an IRIS lab party at Margaret's house with dinner and board games!
October 25th, 2022
IRIS goes to IROS! Nelson and Margaret attended the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Kyoto, Japan. Congratulations to Nelson for a fantastic presentation of his paper on everting toroidal robots, and for an overall great job representing Notre Dame and the IRIS lab to the international robotics community.
October 4th, 2022
We demonstrated our research on soft wearable exosuits, teleoperated physical therapy, and everting toroidal robots to 13 local teachers in the Teachers as Scholars program. Thank you for visiting us!
September 27th, 2022
Congrats to Nelson Badillo, who is featured on Notre Dame's undergraduate admissions webpage! Check out this great story about his unique path to Notre Dame and research in the IRIS Lab.
September 5th, 2022
We are celebrating the first anniversary of the IRIS lab at Notre Dame! Looking forward to another great year ahead. Also, welcome to our new undergraduate student, Tim DeMaro (senior), who is joining the lab this semester.
July 19th, 2022
We participated in Notre Dame's TRIO Talent Search program and gave demonstrations of our research to local rising 8th and 9th graders. Thank you for visiting Notre Dame!
July 8th, 2022
To celebrate the summer, we went kayaking at Ferrettie/Baugo Creek Park in Osceola!
June 30th, 2022
Our first student paper from the IRIS lab has been accepted for publication! Congratulations to Nelson Badillo, whose paper entitled "Self-Propelled Soft Everting Toroidal Robot for Navigation and Climbing in Confined Spaces" will be published in the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Kyoto, Japan in October!
June 21st, 2022
We participated in our second lab outreach event! Approximately 25 middle school students toured the IRIS lab and other Notre Dame robotics labs as part of a summer camp put on by the STARBASE program. IRIS lab students Kabir Madan, Katalin Schäffer, Molly Doerfler, and Ciera McFarland gave demonstrations of their work. Thanks for visiting us!
June 17th, 2022
The IRIS Lab goes to the zoo! We visited our local Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend to observe the animals with prehensile tails, especially the spider monkeys, as inspiration for continuum robot designs.
May 27th, 2022
The IRIS Lab attended our first international robotics conference! The photo shows Katalin, Ciera, and Margaret with other Notre Dame robotics PhD students and faculty at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Philadelphia, PA.
May 20th, 2022
Congratulations to Ciera McFarland and Katalin Schäffer for passing their PhD qualifying exams!
April 22nd, 2022
To celebrate the end of the semester, we went out for lab bowling and dinner!
April 15th, 2022
Congratulations to Nelson Badillo for being selected as a finalist for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) scholar of the year award! He was one of 20 finalists out of over 24,000 HSF scholars across the country! Check out this video that HSF made about Nelson.
April 4th, 2022
Congratulations to current IRIS lab member Molly Doerfler and new IRIS lab member Kabir Madan (rising sophomore) for receiving funding from Notre Dame's Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement to conduct summer research in the lab. Looking forward to working with you this summer!
March 14th, 2022
Congratulations to Amanda Kaczorowski for being selected to present her research in Ireland! She presented her work on a teleoperated physical therapy robot during Notre Dame's Ireland Spring Break.
February 23rd, 2022
Our local student newspaper, The Observer, published an article about our lab!
February 22nd, 2022
We participated in our first lab outreach event! High school students from a local FIRST Robotics team toured our lab and other Notre Dame robotics labs. IRIS lab students Katalin Schaffer, Nelson Badillo, Molly Doerfler, and Ciera McFarland gave demonstrations of their research. Thank you for visiting us!
January 24th, 2022
Welcome to our new undergraduate researchers who are joining the lab this semester: Molly Doerfler (ME junior) and Bona Park (ME freshman)!
January 20th, 2022
The Notre Dame College of Engineering wrote a short article on Margaret's previous work and the IRIS lab's current work on vine robots!
December 8th, 2021
To celebrate the end of the semester, we went on a lab hike at St. Patrick's County Park in South Bend!
September 30th, 2021
We took our first lab photo in front of the golden dome!
September 17th, 2021
The IRIS lab officially started this semester! Welcome to our inaugural team of researchers:
- AME PhD students Katalin Schäffer (joining us after her MS in Info Bionics at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary) and Ciera McFarland (joining us after her BS in Aerospace Engineering at Penn State University)
- ME undergraduates Nelson Badillo (junior), Amanda Kaczorowski (junior), and Michael Mitchell (sophomore)