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JOHN AMEND (CTO) earned his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Hod Lipson’s Creative Machines Lab (one of PopSci’s 25 most awesome college labs of 2011) at Cornell University. John’s graduate research advanced robotic jamming grippers from initial concept to publication in top robotics journals, receiving coverage in over 200 popular news sources including: TIME, MSNBC, Nature News, Popular Science, Scientific American, Science Magazine, NewScientist, MIT Technology Review, Wired, The Washington Post, and IEEE Spectrum. He is a co-founder of Empire Robotics, lead inventor on the company’s core patents, and serves as Principal Investigator for the company’s research grants. John previously performed robotics design research at SUNY Buffalo, where he earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering while serving as mechanical team leader for BotWars and Autonomous Ground Vehicle teams. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award.