P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Lillian Chin is a graduate student at MIT, pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science. Her research interests are in robotics, specifically integrating versatile hardware design with strong control algorithms.

Lillian was born in New York City after her parents left China and Taiwan to pursue graduate school in the United States. Her parents gave Lillian her love of science by frequently taking her to their lab and explaining their experiments. As she grew up, Lillian began pursuing engineering and research more intensely, competing on an international level in the FIRST Robotics Competition and being nationally recognized for bioengineering research through the Intel Science Talent Search.

As an undergraduate at MIT, Lillian further developed her skills in strong interdisciplinary research— creating new materials that could be used to more efficiently move soft robots, and designing a new manufacturing process that can print tissues and circuits. Lillian also was able to pursue summer internships at Apple, Square and the Toyota Research Institute.

Now, as a graduate student at MIT and a 2018 Hertz Fellow, Lillian is currently working on better integrating the mechanical advantages of soft robotics with the latest in learning and planning algorithms. Her ultimate career goal is to become a professor in robotics: designing systems to enable human achievement.