PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Nils Napp

Nils Napp is a robotics researcher whose work connects artificial intelligence to systems that operate in uncertain environments. He earned a master’s degree and PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Washington and worked in the Klavins lab on Robotic Chemistry and Programmable Parts before joining Harvard’s Wyss Institute. At Harvard, he and Ryan Adams showed in 2013 that a class of AI algorithms could be implemented with chemical reactions; at Buffalo, he won a 2019 NSF CAREER Award for embodied-robotics research. In 2025 and 2026, his coauthored research improved ground-texture localization, used large language models to help design robots, and explored microscope-based localization for mobile robots. As of October 2026, he is an assistant professor in Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and advises a doctoral project on a living-mulch management robot.

Works
70
Citations
1,146
h-index
20

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By 2013

    A doctorate at Washington

    Before joining Harvard’s Wyss Institute, he completes a master’s degree and PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Washington and works in the Klavins lab on Robotic Chemistry and Programmable Parts.

  2. 2013

    AI in chemical reactions

    In 2013, he and Ryan P. Adams show that message-passing inference algorithms, a class of artificial intelligence methods, could be implemented using chemical reactions.

  3. 2014

    Joining the University at Buffalo

    He joins the University at Buffalo in 2014 after a postdoctoral role in bio-inspired engineering at Harvard’s Wyss Institute.

  4. 2019

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In June 2019, he is an assistant professor in UB’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering and receives an NSF CAREER Award for “Abstraction Barriers for Embodied Algorithms,” a project that models robot interactions for planning and construction.

  5. 2025

    Improving ground-texture localization

    In 2025, he and Aaron Wilhelm propose an improved bag-of-words retrieval system for ground-texture localization, raising global-localization accuracy and supporting loop-closure detection in SLAM.

  6. September 2026

    LLMs for robot design

    In September 2026, he coauthors a framework that uses large language models to build explicit engineering models with physical relationships, compatibility constraints, and objectives for formal multi-objective optimization.

  7. October 2026

    Microscope-based mobile-robot localization

    In October 2026, he and his coauthors demonstrate mobile-robot localization from natural ground texture viewed through microscope optics, reaching precision in the tens of micrometers.

  8. As of October 2026

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    As of October 2026, he is an assistant professor in Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where his research interests include robotics, autonomy, and artificial intelligence. In June 2026, a Cornell project lists him as the primary adviser for a doctoral project on co-designing a living-mulch management robot.

Career

  1. NowCornell UniversityAssistant Professor
  2. From 2014University at BuffaloAssistant Professor, Faculty
  3. Harvard UniversityPostdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. University of WashingtonMaster’s degree
  2. University of WashingtonPhD

From the biography.

Checked career sources: engineering.buffalo.edu.

Sources and credits

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  1. Construction with Amorphous Materials - Robohub robohub.org. Checked 26 October 2026.
  2. Programming smart molecules wyss.harvard.edu. Checked 26 October 2026.
  3. Nils Napp NSF CAREER Award engineering.buffalo.edu. Checked 26 October 2026.
  4. Improved Bag-of-Words Image Retrieval with Geometric Constraints for Ground Texture Localization arxiv.org. Checked 26 October 2026.
  5. Large Language Models for Model-Based Robot Design arxiv.org. Checked 26 October 2026.
  6. Micro-Localization: High-Precision Mobile Robot Localization Using Microscopic Ground Texture arxiv.org. Checked 26 October 2026.
  7. Nils Napp | Cornell Duffield Engineering duffield.cornell.edu. Checked 26 October 2026.
  8. 13 student projects earn CIDA Research Innovation Fund awards | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 26 October 2026.