Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

PostDoc @EPFL_CREATE. PhD, Marine/Soft Robotics, @EdinburghUni. Saltire Scotland/JSPS Alumni & IET PG Award Winner 2021. kyleliamwalker.github.io Edinburgh Joined December 2019

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Gianl1974 @Gianl1974

2 months ago

Trump just fired all 24 members of the National Science Board. Every single one. By email. No warning. No reason given. The board has existed since 1950. The National Science Board is the independent body that oversees the National Science Foundation, the agency that distributes $9 billion in research grants every year. Its members are scientists and engineers from universities and industry. They serve six-year staggered terms specifically so they cross presidential administrations and stay independent of whoever is in power. On Friday, every single one of them got the same boilerplate email from Mary Sprowls of the Presidential Personnel Office: "On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service." That's it. That's the whole letter. For 76 years of institutional independence. The NSF funds the basic science behind MRIs. Cellphones. LASIK eye surgery. GPS. The internet itself. The Antarctic research stations. The deep-space telescopes. The research vessels mapping the ocean floor. Every breakthrough that made America the world's leader in science for the better part of a century traces back through grants this agency made and this board approved. The board chair, Victor McCrary, was actively advising Congress on Trump's proposed 55% cut to NSF's budget. The board was helping fight back. So Trump fired the board. Marvi Matos Rodriguez, one of the fired members, told reporters she had been reviewing an 80-page report as part of her board duties just days before being terminated. Keivan Stassun, a physicist at Vanderbilt, said NSF's leadership had already stopped responding to board oversight requests months ago. "We would ask them, 'Are you following board governance directives?' And their answer would be, in effect, 'We don't listen to you anymore.'" Now there's no board to answer to. Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science Committee, called it "the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won't stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries?" That's the actual question. Because while Trump is firing American scientists, China is building research universities at a rate we cannot match. The CDC just buried a study showing vaccines work. RFK Jr. runs HHS. The EPA is gutted. The Forest Service is being broken. Half of American children are breathing dangerous air. And now the people who decide what gets researched in the United States have all been fired by email on a Friday afternoon.

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

7 months ago

Let the Movember games begin... Decided to lose the beard this year and try to grow the moustache for men's mental health - one thing I can say for certain is my face has never been colder 🧔‍♂️ Any donations are appreciated and all for a good cause! movember.com/m/15202424?mc=…

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

10 months ago

The press release from my previous project went live today! Take a minute to watch if you're interested in underwater continuum robotics (or interested in watching me try my hardest to speak slowly and clearly... 👀) youtu.be/Mw_EsOVh9nU

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

a year ago

I love my job

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

a year ago

@EPFL_CREATE @ RoboSoft2025 🐙

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

a year ago

At our RoboSoft workshop this year we tried something very different with a shark-tank inspired theme 🦈 Thrilled with how it went and how packed the room was - huge variety of topics and styles and definitely something we'll look to continue in the future 💭

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

a year ago

Submit a single-slide contribution to our workshop on Moonshot Goals in Soft Robotics by March 31st for the chance to pitch your bold, high-risk, high-reward "moonshot" idea to our panel of experts! Website: lnkd.in/e4ikcq_3 Submission form: lnkd.in/euHNmT7X

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Science Robotics @SciRobotics

a year ago

In a new Science #Robotics Focus article, @nana_obayashi and colleagues propose a research model that would blend long-term “slow science” and short-term “fast science” to promote progress in soft robotics. scim.ag/4b7HkHQ

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

a year ago

Our perspective article which arose from our RoboSoft workshop last year has been published in Science Robotics! Massive thanks to all co-authors for their efforts and inputs - looking forward to pushing these initiatives into practice going forward tinyurl.com/yhw8fbrx

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

a year ago

A rather excellent first 3 months in Lausanne ⛷️

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

2 years ago

Christmas mode well and truly activated 🎅🎄

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IEEERoboSoft @IEEERoboSoft

2 years ago

Be Part of the Artistic Revolution at RoboSoft 2025! Do you have a creative project that blends art and technology? Or a keen eye for capturing the beauty of soft robotics? Now’s your chance to shine at RoboSoft 2025 Art Expo & Photography Exhibition! robosoft2025.org/call-for-art/

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

2 years ago

After 5 years in Edinburgh it's time for a new challenge... I'm extremely excited to be joining the @EPFL_CREATE at EPFL as a Postdoc - ready for the challenge and to explore a new country🇨🇭 Massive thanks to @NRobotarium, @bio_liberty and Francesco for the memories!

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

2 years ago

Very happy to see the penultimate paper from my PhD now available online and is open access!🔓 In it we analyse how a deterministic wave predictor can be used to improve the performance of an NMPC controller for subsea vehicles 🌊 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02…

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Deb @DontCallMeDebby

2 years ago

And this is your guy, huh? Thank you Seth Meyers

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

2 years ago

YES!! 🙌 Let out the biggest sigh of relief in a long time reading this 😂

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Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

2 years ago

(2/2) ... As sad as I am to see it end, I've gained an enormous amount from this experience, both technically and personally, and I'm hopeful we can work together again in the future. If you'd like to know more about the work we published during this project, please reach out!

Kyle L. Walker @kyleliamwalker

2 years ago

(1/2) A fantastic end to a fantastic project Over the last 18 months I've had the pleasure to work on a collaborative project between @NRobotarium and @senai_cimatec in Brazil, developing soft robotic solutions for the offshore industry. ...