Nana Obayashi

Nana Obayashi is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the Tandon School of Engineering of New York University. She earned her BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech and worked in the aerospace and automotive industries contributing to vehicle performance optimization, aerodynamic analysis, and flight/vehicle test support. She earned her PhD (planned Nov 2025) in Mechanics at EPFL, where she was advised by Josie Hughes. During her PhD, she visited the University of Cambridge, under the guidance of Fumiya Iida. She is a 2024 Amelia Earhart Fellow and a 2025 RSS Pioneer.

Obayashi's expertise lies in design optimization of robots that exploit soft body-fluid interactions, a topic that sits at the intersection of robotics and aerospace engineering. Her focus is on developing bio-inspired soft robots that interact with and exploit the fluids to exhibit intelligent behaviors as well as be robust and efficient in the natural environment. These are accomplished through developing novel robotic platforms and leveraging methods like large-scale experimentation, data-driven design, and fluids analysis.