Vatsal V. Patel

Hello! I'm an ICoN Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT advised by Profs. Pulkit Agrawal & Hugh Herr. Previously, I was a PhD student in the GRAB Lab at Yale University with Prof. Aaron M. Dollar. I am working on how we close the immense gap between human hand dexterity and artificial systems. Previously, I developed robot hands and sensor architectures that can manipulate everyday objects in unstructured settings without complex control. And my current work focuses on studying natural human in-hand manipulation to improve design and control strategies for robot and prosthetic hands.

In the past, I was a research intern at the Robotics & AI Institute and part of the 2025 cohort of RSS Pioneers. I have also worked at Intuitive Surgical, and taught as an ("outstanding") graduate student instructor and teaching fellow. At Yale, I have provided technical insights to Yale Ventures, and helped build community and mentorships through many engineering and campus-wide groups. Prior to Yale, I got my bachelors (with 2018 Departmental Citation award) and masters from University of California, Berkeley.