Brian Do has received three degrees in mechanical engineering — a bachelor’s from Georgia Institute of Technology (2017) and master’s (2019) and PhD (2023) from Stanford University. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, and he will begin as an assistant professor in the summer of 2024 at Oregon State University. During his PhD, he explored three main topics related to soft robotics: changing the stiffness of soft growing “vine” robots; novel macro-mini pouches for soft wearable haptic displays; and bistable tapes to create a lightweight 3-degree-of-freedom manipulator. In the future, he aims to fabricate soft robots from inexpensive materials to broaden access for underserved populations. His goal is to create human-centered robots, allowing for new capabilities in manipulation, locomotion, and disaster response. A first-generation college student, he has led more than two dozen outreach events for his lab, including serving as president of Stanford Splash, which invites Bay Area youth to attend classes taught by Stanford students. At Georgia Tech, he was the community outreach chair for the Society of Women Engineers, organizing events for hundreds of Atlanta students. Do will leverage his faculty position to push for broader reforms to support DEI, and he plans to organize initiatives that promote retention of URMs and broaden participation in STEM.

Research Interests

Soft Robotics