The Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

With research interests that lie at the intersection of robotics, machine learning and rehabilitation; in particular, on learning robot motion control from demonstration and then enriching behavior development with human feedback, with a focus on robotic devices that provides physical assistance.  

Brenna Argall is an Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation Robotics, with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) and the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PMR). She also holds a research position within the Sensory Motor Performance Program (SMPP) at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), where she directs the Laboratory for Adapative & Autonomous Rehabilitation Robotics (A2-R2 Lab). She is the June and Donald Brewer Junior Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Prior to joining Northwestern and RIC, she was a postdoctoral fellow (2009-2011) in the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA) at the Ècole Polytechnique Fèdèrale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, under the guidance of Prof. Aude Billard. In the spring of 2009 she completed a Ph.D. in Robotics, with co-advisors Prof. Manuela Veloso and Dr. Brett Browning, in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a M.S. in Robotics (2006), and B.S. in Mathematics (2002). Prior to graduate school, she held a Computational Biology position in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).