Summary

Hello! I'm Dylan Drotman, a robotics engineer with 10+ years of hands-on R&D experience, designing robotic systems that fuse hardware, software, and intelligence. My work spans biotech, defense, and consumer robotics, and has been featured in leading journals and global media outlets including Science Robotics, IEEE, CNN, BBC, and Veritasium.

🐢 PhD in Soft Robotics from UC San Diego – Developed air-powered soft robots capable of walking, grasping, and digging. 

🤖 10+ peer-reviewed publications in robotics -1,000+ citations | h-index 10

🧪 2 patents – Electronics-free pneumatic control and robotic wave simulator that replicates 8-foot-tall waves. 

🧬 Former Staff Automation Engineer at Iridia - Automated synthetic DNA encoding with robotics + computer vision

🛠️ Founder of Neubo, Inc.  - Creating soft robotic STEM educational toys for kids aged 6–12

🛰️ Robotics Researcher at NIWC / SPAWAR  - Designed a defense-grade robotic platform for a UAV/USV team 

"Do not go where the path may lead, 

go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson