Curiosity-driven problem solvers who want to know how a body shapes what it can do.
We are looking for PhD students who are curious, goal-driven, hands-on, and excited about solving open-ended problems. Research rarely works the first time, so we especially value people who enjoy figuring things out, are willing to cross disciplines and learn outside their existing expertise, and put effort into communicating and documenting their work.
We welcome students from robotics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, physics, and other related backgrounds. Whatever your background, the questions we ask are answered by building, so we expect our students to be comfortable working with physical robots. we are currently excited to recruit along three broad directions:
You enjoy building things from scratch and figuring out why they do—or don't—work.
We develop dynamic robotic systems, so experience with mechanisms, motors and actuators (e.g., BLDC, DC, and high-torque servos), embedded systems and computers (e.g., Arduino, Teensy, Raspberry Pi), sensors, and rapid prototyping is valuable.
Just as importantly, we are looking for people who can turn a one-off prototype into knowledge: documenting what they built, why they built it that way, and what they learned from it.
How can we describe robots in a way that computers can reason about and eventually generate them?
We are working toward parameterizing and systematizing the robot design process, developing representations that connect tasks, robot morphology, and behavior. Students in this direction may come from computer science, robotics, computational design, or related areas and should enjoy abstraction, software frameworks, algorithms, and thinking carefully about how complex physical systems can be represented computationally.
You enjoy asking “Why did that happen?” and designing experiments to find out.
We are looking for experimentalists who can formulate hypotheses, design careful robot experiments, analyze messy physical data, and extract meaningful principles from observations. These projects will often involve collaborations across robotics, mechanics, materials, physics, and other disciplines, using robots as experimental platforms to test hypotheses about how physical embodiment shapes behavior and capability.
You do not need to fit perfectly into one of these categories. In fact, interdisciplinary students who cross these boundaries are especially welcome. We care more about your curiosity, your willingness to learn, and how you approach difficult problems than whether your current CV contains every skill listed above.
If these questions excite you and you are interested in joining FORGE for your PhD, please submit the Google Form below so that we can learn about your background, expertise, and research interests.
Due to the high volume of inquiries, we may not be able to respond to individual emails regarding PhD admissions. The interest form is the best way to get in touch with us. We will do our best to review every submission and provide feedback whenever possible. Thank you for your interest in FORGE!
PhD interest form →NC State is among the top electrical engineering schools in the United States, and the university is making robotics a major focus through a college-wide robotics initiative that connects faculty across engineering.
We also sit next to Research Triangle Park, one of the densest concentrations of research talent and industry resources in the country, which opens up collaborations and opportunities well beyond campus.
Read more about the NC State ECE graduate program →PhD admission runs through the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Apply to the Electrical Engineering program and name Dr. Wei-Hsi Chen in your statement.
Apply for the PhD →We are always looking for motivated and curious students to join the lab and participate in research! Undergraduate and MS research here is project-based and scoped to fit alongside coursework, so new researchers usually begin with a small introductory project that lets us learn how we work together.
You are also welcome to bring a problem of your own — come talk to us and we will find something that interests us both.
We welcome students from any department who want to engage in cross-disciplinary research. If you are interested in joining FORGE as an MS or undergraduate researcher, fill out the interest form and tell us what you would like to work on.
MS / UG interest form →Have a look at what the lab is working on. Naming a project or a question you would like to take on tells us far more than a list of courses.
Current research →