Sheeraz Athar

Sheeraz Athar

PhD Candidate at, Purdue University

Curriculum Vitae

📄 Download PDF version:
Sheeraz Athar – CV (PDF)

Research Interests

  • Multimodal tactile sensing
  • Soft robotics
  • Robotic manipulation
  • Underwater sensing and robot development
  • Robot perception
  • AI-driven sensor fusion for dexterous manipulation

Education

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering (2022 – Present)
Advisor: Prof. Yu She (MARS Lab)

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Hong Kong
M.Phil. in Mechanical Engineering (2019 – 2021)
Advisor: Prof. Michael Yu Wang

Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, India
B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering (2014 – 2019)
Advisor: Prof. M. Muzammil

Academic Appointments & Research Experience

Graduate Research Assistant — Purdue University (2022–Present)

MARS Lab | Advisor: Prof. Yu She

  • Lead researcher on multimodal tactile sensing systems: VisTac, VibTac, FibTac
  • Developed TacScope, a miniaturized vision-based tactile sensor for surgical tools
  • Designed a hybrid underwater glider–drifter robot for the MOTHERSHIP project
  • Collaborated with Purdue ECE and Georgia Tech on multimodal perception algorithms

Graduate Research Assistant — HKUST Robotics Institute (2019–2021)

Advisor: Prof. Michael Yu Wang

  • M.Phil. thesis on origami-inspired soft actuators
  • Designed rotary and bi-directional actuators for soft robots
  • Developed fiber-reinforced 3D printing techniques

Publications

Journal Articles

  • Athar, S., et al., VibTac: A high-resolution multimodal tactile sensing finger,
    IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 2025.
  • Athar, S., et al., VisTac: Unified multimodal sensing finger,
    IEEE Sensors Journal, 2023.
  • Prince, M. R. I., Athar, S., et al., TacScope,
    Advanced Robotics Research, 2025.

Under Review

  • Athar, S., et al., FibTac, under review at Nature Machine Intelligence

Teaching Experience

Purdue University

Graduate Teaching Assistant (2022–Present)

  • IE 574 – Industrial Robotics and Flexible Assembly
    Robotics labs, perception pipelines, visual servoing, multi-robot coordination
  • IE 370 – Manufacturing Processes
  • IE 472 – Imagine, Model, and Make (3Ds Max, design & animation)

HKUST

Graduate Teaching Assistant (2020–2021)

  • Design & Manufacturing
    SolidWorks, system-level CAD, semester-long design projects

See detailed teaching activities and student projects here:
👉 /teaching/

Mentorship

  • Undergraduate and Master’s student mentoring in tactile sensing and robotics
  • SURF mentorship (underwater robot design)
  • Advisor for Autonomous Robotics Club (ARC)

Outreach

See detailed outreach activities here:
👉 /outreach/

Professional Service

  • Lab operations & procurement (MARS Lab)
  • Organizer: ICON Weekly Research Seminar
  • IEEE Robotics & Automation Society member

Skills

Robotic Systems: Franka Panda, UR-5/10, TM-5, Fetch AMR
Programming: Python, MATLAB, C++, ROS
Simulation: CoppeliaSim, TMFlow
CAD: SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Inventor
Fabrication: 3D printing, soft robotics
FEA: ANSYS, Abaqus
Languages: English, Urdu, Hindi