Cara M. Nunez is an assistant professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. Professor Nunez received a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering and a B.A. degree in Spanish as a part of the International Engineering Program from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA, in 2016, followed by an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 2018 and 2021, respectively. She was formerly a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Graduate Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart, Germany; a Robotics Research Intern at the Honda Research Institute, San Jose, CA, USA; and a Cornell Provost Faculty Fellow and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Professor Nunez’s awards include the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Stanford Centennial Teaching Assistant Award, and the Stanford Community Impact Award. She was a finalist for Best Technical Paper at the 2020 IEEE Haptics Symposium and was named a Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering in 2020. Professor Nunez’s research interests include robotics, haptics, and human-centered design for human-machine interaction; medical applications; augmented and virtual reality; and STEM education.