Education
- Provost's Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Johns Hopkins University, 2024-2027
- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024
- M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020
- B.S., Yale University, 2018
Teaching Interests
Professor West is interested in teaching fundamental courses in system dynamics and control systems. He is especially interested in showing students how these principles can be applied to problems at the intersection of human sensorimotor control and robotics. More broadly, he aims to create an engaging and supportive learning environment that encourages curiosity and creative problem solving.
Research Interests
Professor West’s research seeks to understand and improve human motor control, perception, and learning through the development of simple, interpretable models grounded in control theory. His work combines experimental studies of human movement with the design of robotic systems to investigate how humans perceive, coordinate, and adapt their actions during physical interaction. By identifying latent structure in sensorimotor behavior, his research aims to advance the assessment, augmentation, and acceleration of human skill acquisition using robotic devices. His research is broadly motivated by applications in medical robotics, including rehabilitation and surgery, while also addressing challenges in human–robot interaction and dexterous manipulation.
Recent Publications
- Huang, Taliyah, et al. "Perceiving latent dynamics: Innate and coachable visual estimation of limb damping." bioRxiv (2026): 2026-03. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.02.708982
- Tessari, Federico, A. Michael West Jr, and Neville Hogan. "Explaining human motor coordination via the synergy expansion hypothesis." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122.13 (2025): e2501705122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2501705122
- West, A. Michael, et al. "The study of dexterous hand manipulation: A synergy-based complexity index." IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics (2025). https://doi.org/10.1109/TMRB.2025.3531006
- West Jr, A. Michael, Meghan E. Huber, and Neville Hogan. "Role of path information in visual perception of joint stiffness." PLOS Computational Biology 18.11 (2022): e1010729. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010729
- West, A. Michael, et al. "Dynamic primitives limit human force regulation during motion." IEEE robotics and automation letters 7.2 (2022): 2391-2398. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2022.3141778