Daniel J. Lynch

Daniel J. Lynch

he/him/his

Postdoc and teaching assistant at Northwestern University. My 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.

Teaching Assistant

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University

I have worked as a teaching assistant (TA) for 4 different courses (and a total of 9 different offerings) at Northwestern University, from 2019 to 2026.

  • Robotic Manipulation, ME 449: Fall 2026, Fall 2022. Instructor: Prof. Kevin Lynch
  • Robot Design Studio, ME 495: Winter-Spring 2020, Winter-Spring 2019. Instructors: Prof. Ed Colgate and Billie Strong (2020); Dr. Ron Worth (2019)
  • Introduction to Mechatronics, ME 333: Winter 2021. Instructor: Nick Marchuk
  • Scientific and Embedded Programming in Python, ME 224: Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019. Instructors: Prof. Michael Peshkin (Spring 20xx) and Prof. Malcolm MacIver (Fall 20xx)

Robotic Manipulation (ME 449) - Fall 2026 and 2022

Instructor: Prof. Kevin Lynch
Responsibilities:

  • 2026 and 2022: Teaching guest lectures on robot kinematics, dynamics, planning, and control
  • 2026 and 2022: Holding office hours 2-3 times per week
  • 2026 and 2022: Grading

Robot Design Studio (ME 495) - Winter-Spring 2020 and 2019

Robot Design Studio (RDS) is a capstone course in both mechanical and electrical engineering at Northwestern University. It is also open to early graduate (master’s and doctoral) students. I enrolled in the course in 2018, the first year it was offered, and I enjoyed it so much that I came back as a TA the next two years.

RDS was held in-person for the Winter 2020 quarter and switched to remote for the Spring 2020 quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, I personally developed a MATLAB-based simulation framework that enabled the course to pivot from from designing, building, and controlling real robots to modeling and simulating them (and controlling them in simulation).

Instructors: Prof. Ed Colgate and Billie Strong (2020), Dr. Ron Worth (2019)
Responsibilities:

  • Taught guest lectures on robot kinematics, dynamics, and nonlinear control
  • Guided students on how troubleshoot mechanical designs, electrical circuits, embedded C code running on ARM microcontrollers, and physics-based simulations in MATLAB
  • Grading

Introduction to Mechatronics (ME 333) - Winter 2021

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this course was entirely virtual.
Instructor: Nick Marchuk
Responsibilities:

  • Teaching guest lectures on embedded programming in C on the PIC32 microcontroller and real-time control, including an introduction to UARTs on the PIC32 microcontroller.
  • Guiding students over Zoom on how to troubleshoot microcontroller code and circuits
  • Holding weekly office hours over Zoom
  • Grading

Scientific and Embedded Programming in Python (ME 224) - Spring 2021 and 2020, Fall 2020 and 2019

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this course was entirely virtual when I TA’d in 2021 and 2020. The pivot to a virtual classroom in 2020 was a new experience for the whole teaching team (Prof. Peshkin, myself, and my fellow TAs) as well as the students, and we collectively undertook the additional responsibility of supporting the students and maintaining some semblance of normalcy during that challenging time.

When I TA’d in Fall 2019, I co-ran (with another TA) a 4-hr lab on CircuitPython that met 3x/week.

Instructor: Prof. Michael Peshkin (Spring 2021 and 2020) and Prof. Malcolm MacIver (Fall 2020 and 2019)
Responsibilities:

  • Teaching guest lectures on Python programming and guiding students on how to troubleshoot code
  • Holding weekly office hours over Zoom
  • Grading