Caterina Lamuta

Caterina Lamuta is the Robert and Virginia Wheeler Faculty Fellow in Engineering and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa. She is a pioneer in smart materials and soft robotics, developing bioinspired artificial muscles and cephalopod-inspired underwater robots. She received a DARPA Director's Fellowship (2023) and DARPA Young Faculty Award (2021), an ONR Young Investigator Program Award (2023), and was named an Early Career Scholar of the Year at UI. Her 'Softopus' project creates a soft underwater robot mimicking octopus capabilities including adaptive texture modulation, manipulation, and locomotion.