Mitra Hartmann

Mitra Hartmann serves as Chair and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor of Computer Science by courtesy at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering. She earned a B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Integrative Neuroscience from the California Institute of Technology, followed by postdoctoral positions in Computational Neurobiology at Caltech and Bio-Computing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her research centers on sensorimotor integration, whole body biomechanics, robots as tools for studying neuroscience, sensory acquisition behaviors, and neuroethology. Directing the Sensory and Neural Engineering (SeNSE) Lab within the Center for Robotics and Biosystems, Hartmann investigates the neurobiology and biomechanics of active sensing behaviors, with a focus on rat whisking and bipedal locomotion. Her team quantifies whisking kinematics and mechanics, constructs robotic whisker arrays, develops bio-inspired computational models, and created the Digital Rat—a 3D simulation of rat head and vibrissal array for tactile exploratory behaviors. She previously served as Director of Graduate Studies for Biomedical Engineering and advises the Northwestern Robotics Club.

Hartmann’s contributions include multiple McCormick School of Engineering Teacher of the Year awards in 2009, 2010, and 2011, the NSF CAREER Award in 2008, election to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows, invitation to the National Academy of Engineering’s 14th Annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium in 2008, Searle Junior Fellow at Northwestern in 2006-07, and the Everhart Distinguished Graduate Student Lecturer Award from Caltech in 1996. Selected key publications encompass “On the intrinsic curvature of animal whiskers” (2023), “Fluid-structure interaction of a flexible cantilever cylinder at low Reynolds numbers” (2022), “Continuous, multidimensional coding of 3D complex tactile stimuli by primary sensory neurons of the vibrissal system” (2021), “Tapered polymer whiskers to enable three-dimensional tactile feature extraction” (2021), “Constraints on the deformation of the vibrissa within the follicle” (2021), and “The Cellular and Mechanical Basis for Response Characteristics of Identified Primary Afferents in the Rat Vibrissal System” (2020). Her interdisciplinary work elucidates how morphology and mechanics shape sensory-motor function, influencing fields like robotics, neuroscience, and neuroprosthetics. She delivered the public lecture “Rodents and Robots and Whiskers, Oh My!” at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry during National Robotics Week.