Frank Grasso
Frank Grasso directs the Biomimetic and Cognitive Robotics lab which researches the control, organization, and coordination of behavior using robots and living animals. He researches ‘odd’ creatures with special abilities that humans lack like precision odor tracking in lobsters, dexterous manipulation of objects by octopuses, and also forays into alternative approaches to problems that human brains have solved like communication and shelter construction in monk parakeets and fiddler crabs. He obtained an engineering background at the undergraduate level at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in computational neuroscience, along with practical experience with robots and marine creatures during 7 years as a researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. He is currently a professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, in New York.