Natalie is a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student at Stanford University. Through a collaboration with Intuitive’s Advanced Product Development group, she leads and manages research on a thermal-based slip sensing approach to improve surgeons’ ability to maintain stable, atraumatic grasps on biological tissue. Her work involves finding innovative solutions to challenging sensing and robotics problems through smart product design. Prior projects include the design and implementation of a MRI-compatible haptic teleoperator and the development of a contact event detection method for an autonomous oil drilling robot. Natalie earned a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a B.E. from Dartmouth.