About Me

My name is Dan Lynch, and I am a postdoc in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). My research interests include limbed locomotion for robotic exploration in complex environments, nonlinear dynamics, geometric mechanics and control, granular rheology, fluid mechanics, and gait rehabilitation and prosthetics.

I obtained my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in September 2026, and my dissertation topic was “Dynamic Legged Robotic Locomotion on Yielding Terrain”. I work under the supervision of Prof. Kevin M. Lynch (no relation!) and Prof. Paul B. Umbanhowar at the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at Northwestern University. Besides Kevin and Paul, the other members of my committee were Jason Pusey (DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory) and Prof. Aaron M. Johnson (Carnegie Mellon University).

My research has been published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and I have presented my work at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the American Control Conference, and the Global Physics Symposium (formerly the March Meeting) of the American Physical Society.

I deeply enjoy teaching, and I have served as a teaching assistant and guest lecturer for a number of courses at Northwestern University. I have also volunteered as a teacher at Splash! At Northwestern, a yearly event where high school students from the greater Chicago area can enroll in small classes on subjects not typically taught in school, taught by undergrads, grad students, postdocs, and staff.

Outside of research and teaching, I enjoy spending time outdoors hiking, sailing, birdwatching, and bugwatching. I also compose, record, and produce my own music, including a short piece that NASA featured in coverage of their Lucy mission.