Farrell Helbling

Timeline

1. 2012

   An aircraft at Smith

   In 2012, she earns a B.S. in engineering sciences at Smith College. Her honors project develops a gyro-stabilized model aircraft for atmospheric measurements, and two flights in spring 2012 validate its design.

2. 2015

   A hybrid aerial-aquatic robot

   In 2015, she coauthors “Hybrid Aerial and Aquatic Locomotion in an At-Scale Robotic Insect” with YuFeng Chen and three other researchers. The paper wins the IROS ABB Best Student Paper Award.

3. 2015–2019

   RoboBee and HAMR at Harvard

   She completes an M.S. in engineering sciences at Harvard in 2015 and a Ph.D. in 2019. With Professor Wood, her graduate work focuses on systems-level design of the Harvard RoboBee, an insect-scale flapping-wing robot, and HAMR, a bio-inspired crawling robot.

4. 2019

   First autonomous insect-scale flight

   In 2019, she coauthors Nature’s “Untethered flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle.” Her work on the first autonomous flight of a centimeter-scale vehicle appears on Nature’s cover.

5. 2020–2025

   Cornell appointment and advising award

   In July 2020, she is announced as joining Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor. In 2025, she receives the Canaan Family Award for Excellence in Academic Advising for her commitment to student members of the Combat Robotics team.

6. As of October 2026

   Leading the Helbling Robotics Lab

   In February 2026, she coauthors a study of a 1.29-gram aerial robot that hovers and tracks trajectories using only onboard sensing and computation. During Spring 2026, she teaches Fast Robots and runs the Helbling Robotics Lab, which focuses on designing centimeter-scale autonomous robots. As of October 2026, she is an assistant professor in Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.