Sean Andersson

Professor Andersson is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at BU. He believes that the potential of scanning probe microscopy has not yet been realized. His current work in this area focuses on bringing systems and control theory to bear in atomic force and confocal laser scanning microscopies with the goal of extending the domain of applicability of these technologies deeper into the realm of dynamic processes.

In symbolic control and robotics, Andersson’s research is aimed at developing methods for handling the complexity of robots operating in real-world environments. Ongoing work includes the use of symbols to tokenize both the environment and the controls as well as efforts to handle the stochastic nature of actuators and sensors. He is also interested in gait-based approaches to control, particularly in the setting of hyper-redundant (snake-like) robots.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded Professor Andersson a CAREER award for his research on “Nonlinear Control for Single Molecule Tracking.”