Katelyn Lee

PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University

I'm a third-year PhD student in the ROAM lab advised by Matei Ciocarlie and funded as an NSF GRFP Fellow (2025). I am interested in rehabilitative and assistive robotics for the upper limb and autonomous robotic dexterity.

I received my BS in Bioengineering at Caltech in 2023 and attended Trinity School in NYC.

Resume
Email: k a t e l y n . l e e @ c o l u m b i a . e d u

Research

Wearable Robotic Orthosis for Stroke

We are developing MyHand, a wearable orthosis device for stroke survivors to assist in hand opening. The device is an underactuated, tendon-driven robot that is controlled via forearm surface EMG signals for ipsilateral control. Currently, I am working in collaboration with CHARM Lab at Stanford University to incorporate vibrotactile stimulation into the device and designing finger splints to better support and assist finger extension.

MyHand orthosis
Dexterous Robot Hand Design

Building a two finger gripper for force-feedback teleoperation and autonomous manipulation.
More coming soon!

Personal Project

SolidWorks Relative Transform Macro
A Solidworks VBA macro for Part files to create coordinate frames from 4x4 transforms and calculate relative transforms between coordinate frames. Created out of a desire to easily define complex 3D rotations from 6dof position and orientation data from /tf in Solidworks.

Publications + Posters

* indicates equal contribution

SUREHand: A Self-Stretching Device for One-Handed Use by Stroke Survivors
Dilara Baysal^*, Katelyn Lee^*, Lauren Winterbottom, Dawn M. Nilsen, Joel Stein, Xia Zho and Matei Ciocarlie

Submitted to IEEE 2026 RAS/EMBS Intl. Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob)
ReactEMG Stroke: Healthy-to-Stroke Few-shot Adaptation for sEMG-Based Intent Detection
Runsheng Wang, Katelyn Lee, Xinyue Zhu, Lauren Winterbottom, Dawn M. Nilsen, Joel Stein, Xia Zho and Matei Ciocarlie

Submitted to IEEE 2026 RAS/EMBS Intl. Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob)
Fabric Sensing of Intrinsic Hand Muscle Activity
Katelyn Lee, Runsheng Wang, Ava Chen, Lauren Winterbottom, Ho Man Colman Leung, Lisa Maria DiSalvo, Iris Xu, Jingxi Xu, Dawn M. Nilsen, Joel Stein, Xia Zho and Matei Ciocarlie

Accepted to 2025 IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR)
Volitional Control of the Paretic Hand Post-Stroke Increases Finger Stiffness and Resistance to Robot-Assisted Movement
Ava Chen^*, Katelyn Lee^*, Lauren Winterbottom, Jingxi Xu, Connor Lee, Grace Munger, Alexandra Deli-Ivanov, Dawn M. Nilsen, Joel Stein, and Matei Ciocarlie

IEEE 2024 RAS/EMBS Intl. Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob)
Fabric EMG Sensing for Robotic Orthosis Control
Katelyn Lee, Lisa Maria DiSalvo, Iris Xu, Qijia Shao, Ava Chen, Xia Zhou and Matei Ciocarlie

Poster at Biorob 2024 Workshop: Building Responsive Body-Machine Interfaces With Biosignals and Robotic Exoskeletons

Last updated: 2/05/2026