Our Team

Dr. Stacy Ashlyn

Director and Founder, resume

Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate

Primary Role: Mathematical modelling, robot development, and managing the team. This includes modelling and analyzing robot and penguin locomotion, designing new hardware, coding the robot controls, and advising other students working on the project.

Hobbies: Water Polo, piano, painting

Favorite Penguin Species: Tawaki penguins because they are the most mysterious as a result of living in hard to reach places.

Elizabeth Schutte

Public Relations Officer

Public Relations & Spanish Undergraduate Student

Primary Role: Public outreach and event organization. This includes communicating on behalf of the team, planning and advertising events, designing and running social media, and working with applications for funding.

Hobbies: Writing, jogging, dancing

Favorite Penguin Species: Penguins are Elizabeth’s favorite animal, but her favorite species is the Little Blue penguin because this is the smallest species

Wafi Sharif

Mechanical Engineer

High School Student

Primary Role: Robot testing and development.

Hobbies: Designing and building robots, 3D-printing random ideas, and playing American handball.

Favorite Penguin Species: The Adélie penguin because of how chaotic they are when they're sliding and walking across ice. Watching them move is always a fun sight to see.

Xingyu (Amy) Xian

Data Scientist

Urban Science & Informatics MS Student

Primary Role: Data Science and Machine Learning. This includes using neural networks and computer vision to process video data.

Hobbies: Exploring delicious food, playing table tennis, and enjoying fresh air and sunshine

Favorite Penguin Species: Emperor Penguin because of its incredible endurance and the splash of warm yellow in its appearance.

Danny Li

Computer Engineer

High School Student

Primary Role: 3D biomechanical modelling and robot hardware development

Hobbies: Listening to music, walking, playing volleyball

Favorite Penguin Species: Macaroni penguins because of how many times I’ve seen them.

Lester Peng

Mechanical Engineer

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Student

Primary Role: Methodology and hardware. This includes coming up with new methods to solve existing issues in the data set along with testing and improving robot designs.

Hobbies: Table tennis and formula 1.

Favorite Penguin Species: Emperor penguins because they are so iconic and the chicks remind me of the movie “Happy Feet“.

Ajaykumaar Sivacoumare

Software Engineer

Graduated with Robotics MS in 2023

Primary Role: Addressing low-friction terrain stability challenges through machine learning and computer vision techniques. This involves modelling robot walking in MuJoCo and performing camera calibration to extract 3D biological data from 2D videos.

Hobbies: Chess

Favorite Penguin Species: Fairy penguins because their blue eyes make them stand out