Nadia Figueroa is the Shalini and Rajeev Misra Presidential Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds secondary appointments in Computer and Information Science and Electrical and Systems Engineering and is a core faculty of the GRASP laboratory. Before joining Penn, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Interactive Robotics Group (part of CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She obtained a Ph.D. in Robotics, Control and Intelligent Systems from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Prior to this, she spent time as a Research Assistant in the Robotics and Mechatronics Institute at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and at NYU Abu Dhabi. She holds a B.Sc. in Mechatronics from Monterrey Tech and M.Sc. in Automation and Robotics from TU Dortmund. 

Her research focuses on developing tightly coupled learning, control and estimation algorithms to achieve fluid human-robot collaborative autonomy with safety, efficiency and robustness guarantees. This involves research at the intersection of machine learning, control theory, artificial intelligence, perception, biomechanics and psychology - with a physical human-robot interaction perspective. She has received several honors for her contributions to robotics, including being a finalist for the Georges Giralt PhD award, the KUKA innovation award and receiving best paper awards and nominations at major robotics conferences and journals.