Catharina Maria (Katrien) van Riet, MA, MSc, is a PhD candidate (joint) in the Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering departments at Eindhoven University of Technology.

She holds a master’s degree in Industrial Design from Eindhoven University of Technology, and a master’s degree (research) in Literary studies and bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from Utrecht University. She is a licensed teacher (CELTA) and has 10 years experience in English language teaching.

Her work focuses on creating design tools and workflows that help designers and engineers to implement soft robotics principles in their designs. Coming from an educational background, she excels at teaching and developing materials that lower the barrier to entry to the soft robotics field. As a designer, she favours an interdisciplinary approach with a strong basis in engineering. She is passionate about the open source movement and sharing her designs with other makers and the general public. In her spare time she loves making and sometimes arranging music.

Latest update:
Katrien is currently on a four-month research exchange visit at the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL) in the Robotics, Control and Intelligent Systems group at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) under the supervision of Prof. Jamie Paik.