Wolfgang Fink: Distributed autonomous platform for robotic planetary exploration

While pursuing a trans-disciplinary systems engineering approach in human/brain-machine interfaces, autonomous/reasoning systems, and evolutionary optimization, Wolfgang Fink has focused his research on biomedical engineering for healthcare, self-adapting wearable sensors, smart platforms for mobile- and tele-health, artificial vision prostheses, autonomous robotic space exploration, cognitive/reasoning systems, and computer-optimized design.

Fink is the inaugural Edward & Maria Keonjian Endowed Chair of Microelectronics with joint appointments in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Systems & Industrial Engineering, Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, and Ophthalmology & Vision Science at the University of Arizona (UA).

Fink is the founder and director of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and at UA.

He was a Visiting Associate in Physics at Caltech (2001-2016), and held concurrent appointments as Visiting Research Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California (2005-2014). He was a Senior Researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2000-2009).

He obtained a BS and MS degree in physics and physical chemistry from the University of Göttingen (Germany), and a PhD "summa cum laude" in theoretical physics from the University of Tübingen (Germany) in 1997.