
Dankowicz, Harry
Mechanical Engineering
Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering
Dr. Dankowicz's science scholarship is premised on a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research across a variety of platforms to leverage complementary research paradigms and expand the impact of his contributions. His work aims to uncover innovative solutions to challenges in food production, manufacturing, and energy generation using original contributions to rigorous control theory, complex systems analysis, and algorithm development. With his collaborators, he collects data, builds software tools, proves theorems, formulates heuristic models, and proposes engineering solutions.
Dr. Dankowicz's work has involved extensive industrial collaboration, including with C‐Motion Inc. on tools for dynamic gait analysis, Veeco Instruments on nanoscale surface characterization, and Deere & Co on a range of agricultural applications, such as a self‐calibration technology that resulted in a US patent in 2015. He has collaborated with pediatric orthopedists and entomologists, contributing to innovations in software and hardware tools for characterization and treatment of idiopathic scoliosis and high-throughput computer‐aided analyses of trophallaxis interaction networks in beehives.
Dr. Dankowicz has successfully engaged many undergraduate students in his research, through independent study projects and capstone design projects. He has mentored these students in co‐authoring of conference papers, poster dissemination of research, and intellectual property protection of original inventions, resulting in several undergraduates being listed as co‐inventors on a patent application. Dr. Dankowicz is committed to facilitating such integration of research and education throughout his professional work, including training in translational research and commercialization.
Consistent with his interest in interdisciplinary research, Dr. Dankowicz sees a great convergence within the engineering research community of diverse ideas and perspectives aiming to achieve significant impact on real‐world challenges and he is excited to be able to contribute to such developments. In his group, curiosity drives him to uncover original solutions to fundamental problems of engineering design, robot dynamics and control, complex systems analysis, and algorithm development. On a national and global scale, he hopes to inspire and enable new generations of scientists and engineers from all communities to pursue discovery and innovation.