Jeremy D. Brown, John C. Malone Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, received a Sloan Research Fellowship this year. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowship honors early-career science researchers who show exceptional promise in their fields.
Brown was nominated for his work in neuroscience. As a recipient, he’ll receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship to advance their research.
Brown says he looks forward to using the fellowship funds to support his work studying the connection between humans and robotics and collaborating with Johns Hopkins Medicine to further the medical implications of his research. His work focuses on how humans’ sense of touch impacts their ability to perform dexterous manipulation tasks, such as grasping an object. For those who use prostheses, that sense of touch is absent, but Brown is interested in understanding how a person’s dexterity changes when performing tasks through prostheses. To replicate the sense of touch in these scenarios, Brown and his research team develop novel robotic haptic feedback devices—tools that artificially substitute touch through mechanical sensations such as force and vibration. His research has implications not only for amputees and those who use prostheses but also for increasing accuracy and precision with robot assistance for surgeons who perform complex, minimally invasive procedures.
“Many researchers I admire are Sloan Fellows,” Brown says. “Inclusion in this community is an honor for which I am truly humbled. In addition to catalyzing my research, I hope my recognition encourages other faculty in complementary fields to overcome imposter syndrome in pursuit of advancing interdisciplinary science.”