Postdoctoral Researcher
Research Interests:
- Human motor control
- Perception
- Robotics
- Rehabilitation
- Dexterous manipulation
- Surgical training
A. Michael West, Jr. is a postdoctoral researcher in the Malone Center advised by Jeremy D. Brown. He is additionally affiliated with the Haptics and Medical Robotics Lab within the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as well as the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.
West explores the role of haptic feedback in various manipulation and perceptual tasks, aiming to use this knowledge to enhance robotic rehabilitation devices designed to restore sensorimotor deficits. For his work, he has been awarded a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Office of Graduate Education’s Diversity Fellowship, a University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring Sloan Scholarship, a GEM Fellowship, a Ford Global Fellowship, an MIT Thomas G. Stockham, Jr. (1955) and Bernard (Ben) Gold Fellowship, a Takeda Fellowship, an MIT-Accenture Fellowship, and a Johns Hopkins University Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Previously, West completed his PhD in mechanical engineering at MIT in May 2024, under the guidance of Neville Hogan. There, his research focused on improving control algorithms for robots used in rehabilitation and dexterous manipulation. Specifically, he investigated human upper-limb motor control and perception during complex manipulation tasks, introducing novel analytical techniques and experimental paradigms that yielded new insights to the field. He also holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Yale University (2018) and an MS from MIT (2020).
West will join the Georgia Institute of Technology Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor in August 2027, where he will be actively recruiting PhD students to launch his lab investigating human motor control and perception to advance healthcare robotics.