Kira Barton

Timeline

1. 2001–2010

   Degrees at Colorado and Illinois

   Originally from Silverthorne, Colorado, she earns a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado in 2001. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign she completes a master's degree in 2006 and a PhD in mechanical engineering in 2010 under Andrew G. Alleyne. As a graduate student she works in Nano-CEMMS, an NSF-sponsored center at Illinois.

2. 2011

   Assistant professor at Michigan

   She joins the University of Michigan as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in 2011. Her lab works on next-generation manufacturing processes at very small scales, from iterative learning control and high-precision motion control to nano-scale printing for electrical and biomedical uses. The research supports products from high-resolution, DNA-detecting sensors to sophisticated robots.

3. 2014–2017

   NSF CAREER and young-investigator awards

   She receives an NSF CAREER Award in 2014 and the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award in 2015. In 2017, the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division gives her its Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and Michigan names her a Miller Faculty Scholar.

4. June 2022

   One of 25 manufacturing leaders

   In June 2022, SME names her one of 25 leaders transforming manufacturing. Her team at U-M creates a requirements-driven digital twin framework that sets out the specifications for re-usable, interoperable, maintainable and autonomous digital twins. She describes smart manufacturing as a field that brings together robotics, artificial intelligence and cyber-physical systems.

5. July 2022

   A Manufacturing Leadership Award

   In July 2022, the Manufacturing Leadership Council recognizes her Barton Research Group, together with Applied Dynamics, MxD and Dow, in its Collaborative Ecosystems category. Their project is called Digital Twins for Process Manufacturing: Open Architecture Industrial IoT Framework.

6. 2023–2024

   Generative AI and ASME fellowship

   In the 2023–2024 academic year, she and Mania Aghaei Meibodi win a Michigan Materials Research Institute faculty proposal award for a project on generative AI for materials and 3D printing co-design in construction. She is elected an ASME Fellow in 2024.

7. June 2025–March 2026

   An NSF digital twin center

   The Center for Digital Twins in Manufacturing, a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Arizona State University, receives its NSF award in June 2025 and holds its kickoff meeting in March 2026. She serves as Michigan site director under center director Dawn Tilbury. The center studies how AI and machine learning can speed up the modeling, estimation and prediction capabilities of digital twins.

8. As of October 2026

   Professor of robotics at Michigan

   She is a professor of robotics and of mechanical engineering and a Miller Faculty Scholar at Michigan, where her research covers learning, precision coordination and motion control for multi-agent systems in manufacturing and autonomous robots. She is also an associate director of the Automotive Research Center, sponsored by the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center, where her projects include hierarchical game-theoretic learning for mixed human-autonomous vehicle networks.