CSAIL Graduate Student

Eduardo Torres-Jara

Soonmin Bae with camera

Where did you grow up?

Ecuador. Cities: Cuenca and Quito

What was your academic path before coming to grad school at MIT?

Undergrad at Ecuador. Degree Ingeniero in Electronic Engineering from Escuela Politecnica del Ejercito. Work for four years in Ecuador and particpated in some startups.

When did you join a grad program at MIT and what department are you in?

September 1999. EECS

What are you working on and why are you passionate about it?

Sensitive manipulation. Robotic manipulation mainly guided by dense tactile sensing and force feedback instead of vision. I am passionate about this because
- I love to build machines especially robots.
- Robotics is a multidisciplinary field which makes you learn from different topics when searching for a solution.
- I developed new technologies that enable a different approach to the problem of robotic manipulation.
- My approach is quite different from the traditional ones and it seems very promising so far.
Currently, we have been able to undertake tasks that state of the art robots cannot.

What are your future plans?

I am interested in making robots move from industry to daily applications. That might involve to create an startup company. I have also been very interested in Ecuadorian politics. At some point I would like to use all the multicultural experiences and learning from MIT to create more working opportunities at Ecuador.

Anything else to share?

Ecuadorian families are very close and being far away is always a challenge.