Ralph Etienne-Cummings is a pioneer in mobile robotics and legged locomotion. His innovations over the past three decades have the potential to produce computers that can perform recognition tasks as effortlessly and efficiently as humans, and he has developed prosthetics that can seamlessly interface with the human body to restore functionality after injury or to overcome disease. Etienne-Cummings’ research includes developing systems and algorithms for biologically inspired and low-power processing, biomorphic robots, closed-loop neural prosthetics and computer integrated surgical systems and technologies. He is the founding director of JHU’s Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering and consults for numerous technology firms, including Nova Sensors, Inc., Innovative Wireless Technologies, Singular Computing, Panasonic North America, Avago Technologies, Micron Technologies. He was a visiting scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a visiting African scholar at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and an eminent visiting professor at the University of Western Sydney (Australia). At Johns Hopkins he holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science and is former chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Etienne-Cummings was Associate Director for education and outreach for the National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Engineering Research Centers on Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology.
