PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Cara M. Nunez

Cara M. Nunez is a robotics researcher whose work explores haptics and how robots learn from people. She earned biomedical engineering and Spanish degrees at Rhode Island, studied haptics at Stanford, and held research posts at Max Planck and Harvard. Her later studies examine feedback from social robots and CIVIL, a visual imitation learning method for robots. As of October 2026, she is an assistant professor in Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Works
30
Citations
495
h-index
11

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2016

    An eye-tracking robotic arm

    She earns a B.S. in biomedical engineering and a B.A. in Spanish at the University of Rhode Island in 2016. As a student, she pitches a wearable eye-tracking device to control a robotic arm for people with mobility impairments.

  2. 2018–2021

    A Stanford bioengineering PhD

    She earns an M.S. in mechanical engineering at Stanford in 2018 and a Ph.D. in bioengineering in 2021 while working in the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine Lab.

  3. 2019–2020

    Research at Max Planck

    She works as a visiting researcher in the Haptic Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in 2019–2020.

  4. 2021–2023

    A Harvard research fellowship

    From 2021 to 2023, she holds a Cornell Provost Faculty Fellowship at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, working with its Biorobotics Laboratory, Microrobotics Laboratory, and Move Lab.

  5. 2024

    Feedback from a social robot

    In 2024, she coauthors a study on a minimally supervised social robot that gives real-time corrections and post-task scores. The study finds both feedback types improve user performance and that real-time feedback improves task understanding.

  6. 2025

    CIVIL for robot imitation

    In 2025, she coauthors CIVIL, a visual imitation learning method that lets human teachers mark task-relevant objects and describe their state with language prompts.

  7. 2025

    A Cornell Engineering EPICC Award

    In 2025, Cornell Engineering honors her with an EPICC Award.

  8. As of October 2026

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    As of October 2026, she is an assistant professor in Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Career

  1. NowCornell UniversityAssistant Professor
  2. 2021–2023Harvard UniversityCornell Provost Faculty Fellow
  3. 2019–2020Max Planck Institute for Intelligent SystemsVisiting Researcher

Education

  1. 2021Stanford UniversityPh.D. in Bioengineering
  2. 2018Stanford UniversityM.S. in Mechanical Engineering
  3. 2016University of Rhode IslandB.S. in Biomedical Engineering and B.A. in Spanish

From the biography.

Checked career sources: robotics.cornell.edu.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Cara Nunez ’16 – The University of Rhode Island uri.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Cara M. Nunez – Robotics @ Cornell robotics.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. People Directory – Harvard Biorobotics Lab biorobotics.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Closing the loop in minimally supervised human–robot interaction: formative and summative feedback nature.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. CIVIL: Causal and Intuitive Visual Imitation Learning arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Awards and Honors 2025 | Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering | Cornell Duffield Engineering duffield.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.