M. Ani Hsieh

M. Ani Hsieh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she serves as Deputy Director of the GRASP Laboratory and Graduate Program Chair for the ROBO program. Her research lies at the intersection of robotics, dynamical systems, and control, with a focus on understanding how robots interact with complex, dynamic environments and how environmental physics can be leveraged to enable more efficient, resilient, and capable autonomous systems. Hsieh’s group develops new abstractions for modeling dynamic environments—such as ocean currents, fluid flows, and distributed fields—and designs algorithms and control architectures that allow heterogeneous robot teams to sense, navigate, and collaborate within these environments. Her work spans flow-based control of marine robots, adaptive sampling, learning Koopman operator–based models, time-varying path planning, opportunistic communication, and energy-aware coordination strategies. With strong emphasis on experimental validation, her research integrates theory, field robotics, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to advance robust autonomy for marine, aerial, and distributed robotic platforms.