Joseph Foley

Dr. Joseph Timothy Foley (MIT BSc ‘99, MEng, ‘99, PhD ‘07) has worked as a researcher and designer in a large variety of fields with a heavy emphasis on infrastructure and mechatronics.  His graduate research at the MIT Auto-ID center focused on integrating RFID into smart devices in a scalable and secure way, resulting in a number of patents.  His postdoctoral research at MIT was in partnership with SKF, investigating methods of reducing the impact and energy usage of manufacturing processes.  He developed Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuated folding robots as the technical lead for the Harvard-MIT-iRobot DARPA ChemBots team, resulting in another patent on the manufacture of enhanced SMA spring actuators.  Joseph is now an assistant professor at Reykjavik University(RU) and teaches topics in mechatronics and mechanical design which make heavy use of Complexity Theory and Axiomatic Design.  He is currently head of the RU Lab for Unmanned Vehicles which focuses on VTOL drone research and application.  Joseph will be providing engineering support for the project.