People


Faculty

Cynthia Sung

Cynthia Sung

Associate Professor, MEAM; Secondary faculty, CIS & ESE

Cynthia Sung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) and a member of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) lab at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed a Ph.D. (2016) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, advised by Prof. Daniela Rus, and a B.S. (2011) in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University. Her research interest is computational design and fabrication for robotic systems, with a particular focus on origami-inspired and compliant robots. She is the recipient of a 2023 ONR Young Investigator award, 2019 NSF CAREER award, 2020 Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Scholars Award, and a 2017 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award.

Research Groups

Publications

CurveQuad: A centimeter-scale origami quadruped that leverages curved creases to self-fold and crawl with one motor

Publisher IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Design and Control of a Tunable-Stiffness Coiled-Spring Actuator

Publisher IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation

Increasing Reliability of Self-Folding of the Origami Hypar

Publisher ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics

Forward kinematics and control of a segmented tunable-stiffness 3-D continuum manipulator

Publisher IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation

Soft Hybrid Aerial Vehicle via Bistable Mechanism

Publisher IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

REBOund: Untethered origami jumping robot with controllable jump height

Publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Optimal structure synthesis for environment augmenting robots

Publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Animatronic soft robots by additive folding

Publisher SAGE Publications

Leveraging compliance in origami robot legs for robust and natural locomotion

Publisher International Meeting of Origami Science, Mathematics, and Education

Programmable 3-d surfaces using origami tessellations

Publisher International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics, and Education (OSME)

Spotlight on origami robots

Publisher Science Robotics

Functional co-optimization of articulated robots

Publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Interactive robogami: An end-to-end system for design of robots with ground locomotion

Publisher International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)

Self-folded soft robotic structures with controllable joints

Publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

News

Student News

Y-Prize Technologies 2024-25

September 24, 2024


Faculty News

GRASP News

Student News

A Centimeter-Scale Quadruped Leverages Curved-Crease Origami

October 25, 2023


GRASP News

ICRA 2022 – GRASP Accepted Papers

February 9, 2022


GRASP News

2021 IROS Conference Papers

August 6, 2021


GRASP News

ICRA 2021 Results

June 4, 2021


GRASP News

ICRA 2021 – GRASP Accepted Papers

March 3, 2021


GRASP News

ICRA 2020 Recap

June 24, 2020


Faculty News

Cynthia Sung Receives 2019 NSF CAREER Award

April 1, 2019


Faculty News

Small Robots Inspired by Origami in Penn News

September 7, 2017


Ph.D. Students

Dongsheng Chen

Robotics MSE '19; PhD, MEAM


Daniel Feshbach

PhD, CIS


Christopher Kim

PhD, MEAM


Shivangi Misra

Robotics MSE '20; PhD, ESE


Mason Mitchell

PhD, CIS


Gabriel Unger

PhD, MEAM - MEAM MSE '20


Research Staff

Wei-Hsi Chen

PhD, ESE '22 - Postdoctoral Researcher, ESE


Alumni

Jessica (McWilliams)Weakly

PhD, MEAM '24 - University of Pennsylvania MEAM Lecturer


Rachel Holladay

Postdoctoral Researcher, MEAM (incoming GRASP Faculty - Fall 2025)


Kinegami: Algorithmic Design of Compliant Kinematic Chains From Tubular Origami

Cynthia Sung

Research Areas

  • Computational Design
  • Origami Robots
  • Soft Robotics