Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, has appointed Dr. Aaron Ames the Morris E. Foster Faculty Fellow II in Mechanical Engineering in recognition of his many accomplishments and future potential. The endowed faculty fellowship appointment was effective June 1.
Ames is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He joined the Texas A&M engineering faculty in August 2008. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a master’s degree in mathematics. He earned bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and mathematics, both from the University of St. Thomas.
Ames won the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2010 for his project “Closing the Loop on Walking: From Hybrid Systems to Bipedal Robots to Prosthetic Devices and Back.” In 2013 he won a Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, Networks, and Applications.
Ames’ research interests include dynamical, control, robotic and hybrid systems with a special emphasis on bipedal robots, behavior unique to hybrid systems such as Zeno behavior and the mathematical foundations of hybrid systems.