Dr. Rachel Vitali

Dr. Rachel Vitali is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Iowa. Prior to her appointment, she was a NASA-funded TRISH postdoctoral fellow in the Industrial & Operations Engineering Department at the University of Michigan, where she also received her B.S.E. in 2015, M.S.E in 2017, and Ph.D. in 2019 from the Mechanical Engineering Department. As director of the Human Instrumentation and Robotics (HIR) lab, she leads multiple lines of research in computational and analytical dynamics with applications to wearable technology for analysis of human motion in a variety of contexts ranging from warfighters to astronauts. In addition to her engineering work, she also has an interest in engineering education research. As a doctoral student, she led a project aimed at improving the undergraduate educational experience by systematically incorporating sensor technology into the curriculum as an engaged learning activity, for which she was awarded an ASME Graduate Teacher Fellowship.