Nancy Pollard

Nancy Pollard is a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where she leads research on dexterous manipulation, soft robotic hands, and the modeling of physical interaction between humans and their environment. Her work seeks to understand how people coordinate forces, motion, and contact to perform complex manipulation tasks—lifting bulky objects, climbing irregular terrain, or manipulating tools—and to translate these insights into effective control strategies for robots. Pollard’s group explores algorithms that learn from human demonstrations, develop physically plausible motion models, and design soft, anthropomorphic hands capable of dexterous in-hand manipulation. She also investigates how motion and interaction principles apply across robotics and computer graphics, aiming to create both more capable robots and more expressive digital characters. Her interdisciplinary approach integrates biomechanics, perception, graphics, and control, with an emphasis on creating manipulation systems that are robust, intuitive, and grounded in human examples.