Robert Full is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Full received his undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees at SUNY Buffalo and then held a postdoctoral position at The University of Chicago before joining the faculty at Berkeley in 1986. He holds a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and is a member of the Graduate Groups in Biophysics and Science and Mathematics Education in the Graduate School of Education. He is the founder and director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER), the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, on the science advisory board of the journal Science Robotics and the Swiss National Science Foundation’s National Centre for Competence in Research (NCCR) – Robotics, and serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine’s Board of Life Sciences. He is a National Academy of Sciences Mentor in the Life Sciences, an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences under the category, Emerging Fields.
Professor Full has briefed the United States House of Representatives Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Caucus on Interdisciplinary Research and American Innovation. Professor Full directs the Poly-PEDAL Laboratory investigating the Performance, Energetics and Dynamics of Animal Locomotion. He has authored over two hundred research contributions in animal motion science using diverse biological designs as natural experiments. Professor Full has collaborated closely with engineers, applied mathematicians, material scientists, and industry by providing biological principles to inspire the design of search-and- rescue and hazard detection robots, artificial muscles, novel control algorithms, and self-cleaning, dry adhesives. He holds the nanotechnology patents to the area of fibrillar adhesion pioneered by his discoveries on geckos. Professor Full has created a new Howard Hughes Medical Institute supported education program, Eyes Toward Tomorrow, to share his interdisciplinary research approaches demonstrating inclusive excellence to empower the next generation because a diverse set of minds is required for innovation.