- Jake Welde, PhD
- Assistant Professor
- Sibley School of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering - office: Upson Hall 449
- lab: Upson Hall 466
- jakewelde@cornell.edu
Dr. Jake Welde is an Assistant Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. He is a member of Robotics@Cornell and a graduate field member in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and Applied Mathematics. His research explores the role of differential geometry and dynamical systems theory in control synthesis and design for robotic systems, exploiting structural properties to explainably synthesize efficient controllers, accelerate learning algorithms, and develop more capable robot morphologies. He envisions a future in which robots move through their surroundings as capably and dynamically as their counterparts in Nature.
Prior to joining MAE at Cornell in 2025, Jake spent a decade at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and his Masters in Robotics. His PhD thesis, "Geometric Methods for Efficient and Explainable Control of Underactuated Robotic Systems", was completed in the GRASP Laboratory. Jake was a finalist for a Best Paper Award at ICRA (2021) and the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2019). He has also been recognized as an RSS Pioneer (2024) and has earned departmental awards for teaching, scholarship, and leadership.
Google Scholar | Ph.D. Thesis | Full CV (Spring 2026)
