Bio

Rachel Holladay is the incoming Asness Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering within the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at the University of Pennsylvania, starting in August 2025. She will also be a member of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) lab. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Researcher in MEAM and GRASP, with Cynthia Sung and Daniel Koditschek. Her research focuses on developing algorithms and models that enable robots to robustly perform long-horizon, contact-rich manipulation tasks in everyday environments. Prior to UPenn, she completed a Ph.D. (2024) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, advised by Prof. Tomas Lozano-Perez and Prof. Alberto Rodriguez, and a B.S. (2017) in Computer Science and Robotics from CMU.