I'm Julia Di, an artist, writer, science communicator, and robotics student.
I'm currently a Ph.D. student in the Biomimetic & Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory at Stanford University, advised by Mark Cutkosky. For my Ph.D. I am improving the interaction capabilities of robots. But my goal in life is to explore the intersection of art with technology, and social good with technology.
You can find my full C.V. pdf here, or my one-page resume pdf here.
Prior to coming to Stanford, I grew up in small-town Maryland about an hour away from D.C. Fun fact — I lived next to a horse farm and I'm allergic to horses. I mostly spent my K-12 years honing my art and writing skills. I also learned to play a traditional Chinese instrument, the guzheng.
In the past I have worked on NASA robots, an X-plane, and satellites; I've also hiked a sulphur volcano and jumped out of a plane. I have been very grateful to receive the 2020 Interact Fellowship, 2019 Threshold Ventures Fellowship, NSF Graduate Fellowhsip (declined), 2018 Brooke Owens Fellowship, and 2017 AIAA 20 Twenties Laureate. I received my B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 2018, where I started the Columbia Space Initiative and was very active on campus as a student leader.
The latest news!
Most recent publications on Google Scholar.
‡ indicates equal contribution.
From the Lab Notebook: Observations on Tactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation
Julia Di
Robotics: Science and Systems (2020)
Rapid Mission Concept Development at the 2019 Caltech Space Challenge: A Small Lander Network Studying the Habitability of Enceladus
Katiyayni Balachandran, Paolo Cappuccio, Julia Di, Kelsey Doerksen, Jared Fuchs, Alessia Gloder, Rebecca Jolitz, Monica Li, Dan Limonchik, Lotfi Massarweh, Atila Meszaros, Daniel Naftalovich, Erica Nathan, Thomas Peev, Marc Rovira-Navarro, Shreya Santra
3rd Symposium on Space Educational Activities.
Spyndra 1.0: An Open-Source Proprioceptive Robot for Studies in Machine Self-Awareness
Ori Kedar, Christie Capper, Yan-Song Chen, Zhaoyang Chen, Julia Di, Yonah Elzora, Lingjian Kong, Yuanxia Lee, Julian Oks, Jorge Orbay, Fabian Stute, Chad Tarpley, Joni Mici, and Hod Lipson
Pre-print.
A history of what I've done outside of the classroom / my job. Feel free to check out my projects on Instagram: tech projects, and art projects
It's always good to reflect on one's journey. Here is a timeline of things that were important to me.
Adapted with permission using Martin Saveski's website template, available at this GitHub repo, and with help from Steven V. Miller's blog. The light mode toggler was inspired by Cassidy Williams' website, with core implementation from developerdrive.com.
Things are a bit buggy because I'm not a web developer by trade, so apologies for any browsing issues! All opinions on this site are my own and do not reflect my employer.