Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen

Biography Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen is a physicist specializing in electroactive materials/mechanisms and ultrasonic NDE. He is a Senior Research Scientist and Group Supervisor, Advanced Technologies and the Nondestructive Evaluation and Advance Actuators (NDEAA) Lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The NDEAA lab, which he established in 1991, has been responsible for a series of innovative concepts and mechanisms for planetary explorations, medical, commercial and other applications. Dr. Bar-Cohen is a Fellow of two technical societies: SPIE and the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT). From Nov. 2009 to Sept. 2011, he served as the Chair of the JPL’s Senior Research Scientists Council. He made two notable discoveries of ultrasonic wave phenomena in composite materials: the polar backscattering (1979) and the leaky Lamb waves (LLW) (1983). He received his Ph. D. in Physics (1979) and M.Sc. in Materials Science (1973) from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Currently, he is responsible for developing ultrasonic drills, piezoelectric motors, ultrasonic NDE and health monitoring methods, haptic interfaces, electroactive polymer (artificial muscles) based mechanisms, and high power ultrasonic techniques. The drill and the electroactive polymer related activity were selected as NASA and JPL Technology Spotlights. His prior affiliations include Israel Aircraft Industry (1971-1979), NRC Postdoc at AFML (1979-1980), SRL (1980-1983) and McDonnell Douglas Corp. (1983-1991).  His scientific, engineering and technology accomplishments have earned him two NASA Honor Award Medals - NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal (2001), and NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement (2006), two SPIE’s Lifetime Achievement Awards – NDE (2001) and Smart Materials and Structures (2005), the ASNT’s 2002 Lester Honor Lecture Award, the 2006 ASNT Sustained Excellence award, the 2007 SPIE President’s Award as well as many other honors and awards. His initiatives and proactive efforts in the area of Electroactive Polymers led to the SPIE’s EAPAD annual conference (which he has been chairing since 1999), the WW-EAP Newsletter, and the WW-EAP Webhub. This website is part of his JPL's NDEAA website that received over million total hits in about 18-months (from January 1, 2000 to July 2 2001). The highest hits/day was recorded on March 9, 2005, with 9063 total hits and 3626 unique hits. Moreover, the most comprehensive book on the subject of EAP, for which he is the Editor and co-author, was published in March 2001 by SPIE Press. The 2^nd edition of this book was published in March 2004. Also, he co-editing a book that is entitled “Biologically-Inspired Intelligent Robots” examining the scientific and engineering states as well as the future possibilities of making robots based on these materials. His edited and coauthored book entitled “Biomimetics – Biologically Inspired Technologies” that provides a high level approach to this topic. This book was published by CRC Press in November 2005. In an effort to promote rapid advances in the development of EAP, Dr. Bar-Cohen posed in 1999 a challenge to the worldwide research and engineering community to develop a robotic arm that is actuated by artificial muscles to win an armwrestling match against a human opponent. He held the first armwrestling match between EAP actuated robot and human on March 7, 2005 as part of the SPIE Annual International EAPAD Conference.. Three arms wrestled with a high school female student (she is now a Caltech student) and she won against all of them. Even though the arms lost the contest, this was a major milestone for the field. He made significant contributions to NDE of composites and bonded solids as well as aging aircraft structures. He led the development of a crawler, known as MACS (Multifunctional Automated Crawling System) that can serve as a robotic platform for PC board base instruments. As a follow-on effort, he edited and co-authored an ASNT book on the subject of robotics for NDE, which was issued in April 2000. Other contributions include real time monitoring of composites curing, broadband transducers, a LLW device for nondestructive determination of elastic properties of composites and a catheter-based acoustic microscope. Dr. Bar-Cohen’s research and accomplishments with his teams received extensive media coverage including NASA Press Releases, JPL's Universe, and media articles in daily newspapers (Diariovasco (Spain), Glendale News Press, Globes (Israel), Haaretz (Israel), LA Times, Maariv (Israel), Newsday, Newsweek Pasadena Start News, The Sunday Times, Yediot Aharonot (Israel), etc.), magazines (Assistive Technologies, Aerospace America, Aviation Week, Business Week, Computerworld (Switzerland), Discover, EE Times, International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, New Scientist, Newsweek, Smart Business, Orthotics and Prosthetics Business News, Poptronics, Popular Science, Rosh Gadol (Israel), Scientific American, Time Magazine, Tech Directions, STROM (Switzerland), etc.), technically related websites (Discovery Channel, Natural History, MSNBC, RobotBooks.com, Nando Times News, etc.), as well as radio (NPR-All Things Considered, BBC, Voice of America, Austria’s FM4, etc.) and TV interviews. Dr. Bar-Cohen is listed on over 34 Who’s Who Biographic Directories and in the Nov. 2001 issue of Tech Briefs he was featured as a Who’s Who in NASA. For his contributions to the field of electroactive polymers, Business Week named him, under the category Gurus of Technology, as one of “Five People Pushing Tech's Boundaries” and “The Brain behind Plastic Muscle”; Popular Science (mirrored by CNN) named him the “Artificial Muscle Man”; SPIE’s OE magazine described him as “redefining robotics” and Scientific American described him as the “unofficial coordinator” of the field of EAP. He made about 360 publications, numerous presentations at national and international conferences, Chaired/CoChaired 44 Conferences/Symposia, has 22-registered patents and (co)Editor/Co-author of 7 books (with one in 2nd edition) and 21 conference proceedings, 94 New Technology Reports. Moreover, he is a member of the · Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring (IJSHM), Sept. 2001 to Nov. 2009 · International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems Editorial Advisory Board (since 2004). · Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute for the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF), Since 2005 · Editorial Board of the “Bioinspiration & Biomimetics: learning from nature” Journal, The Institute of Physics, England http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=board/1748-3190/1 (Since Sept. 2005, extended till Dec. 2012) · American Biographical Institute, Inc. (ABI)’s Distinguished Research Board of Advisors (Since Jan 2005). http://www.ars-journal.com/ · Advisory Board of the Asia Pacific Committee on Smart and Nano Materials (APCSNM) http://www.smart-nano.org (Since Nov. 2007) · Editorial Board of the Journal of Bionic Engineering (JBE) since December 2009. · Editorial board of the Advances in Materials Research Journal since May 2011. · Associate Editor of the International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials, Taylor & Francis Group, Since May 24, 2011 · Biomimetics Book Series Editor, Taylor & Francis Group, Since 2010

NASA Honor Award Medals

"I attribute my success to my imagination, creativity and hard work; but above all it comes from good collaboration with top experts worldwide. My idea of cooperative research with interdisciplinary experts was adapted from the world of ants who collectively are capable of performing impressive tasks that are far beyond what they are expected to be able to do as individuals." Dr. Bar-Cohen's quote from the article entitled "Redefining Robotics" in Member Profile of the month, OE Magazine, March 2003.

Resume and Publications

Resume

Honors and Awards

Refereed professional journal publications

Books and Proceedings

Chapters of Handbooks

List of Publications

List of Patents

List of NASA New Technology Reports

List of Standards and Process Specifications

List of Newsletters

NDE and Advanced Actuators (NDEAA) Technologies activity

News Clippings

The Nov. 2001 issue of the NASA Tech Briefs covered Dr. Bar-Cohen under the title "Who's Who in NASA"

"At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the future is now." LAtimes.Com coverage that includes NDEAA, August 7, 2000
Dr. Bar-Cohen and NDEAA in "Who's Who in NASA", NASA Tech Briefs, Nov. 2001
"Redefining Robotics" - OE Magazine, March 2003, - p. 32-33.
"Special Report: Gurus of Technology - Five People Pushing the Technology Boundaries" Business Week Online. April 1, 2003.
"Special Report: Gurus of Technology - The Brain behind Plastic Muscle" Business Week Online, April 1, 2003.
"MSN Careers Column - "So you want to be a rocket man?," April 24, 2001
"JPL Spotlight: Scientists 'Muscle' Sci-Fi into Reality," June 3, 2002
"Meet the Artificial Muscle Man," Popular Science, Sept. 30, 2003
"Artificial Muscles", Scientific American, Oct. 2003
"Meet the Artificial Muscle Man," CNN.com, Oct. 9, 2003
"Electric Flex," IEEE Spectrum, June 2004
"Muscle Mover," EE Times, October 4 2004, page 19

"NASA’s “Muscle” Man," JewishJournal.com, December 5, 2010

"NASA’s “Muscle” Man," The Hebrew version of the article in JewishJournal.com, December 11, 2010

Videos and audios of presentations

"Humanlike Robots: The Realization of the Science Fiction of Synthetic Humans" a lecture on video von Karman Lecture Series, Feb. 2010

"Electroactive Polymers as Artificial Muscles" a lecture on video von Karman Lecture Series, Feb. 2002
"Electroative Polymers (EAP) as Artificial Muscles - Reality and Challenges," Fermilab Colloquium, April 30, 2003"
NPR AirTalk interview with Larry Mantle, Dec. 3, 2003 under the Caltech Edition (Listen) - starts at the minute 16:50 of the 31:00 minutes of this audio file.
NPR's review of the armwrestling competition and the interview on NPR "In Arm Wrestling, Teen Beats Robots Hands Down"
PTI Course entitled "Biomimetics - Biologically Inspired Technology," held on October 24, 2005, at Texas Instrument, Dallas, TX

For more information you can contact:
Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), M.S. 67-119, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099
Phone: 818-354-2610 Fax: 818-393-2879, E-Mail: yosi@jpl.nasa.gov

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