Ada (is) Short is the professional page and occasional blog (in theory) of Ada-Rhodes Short (me).

I am a PhD Candidate at Oregon State University in the Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering department studying design and decision making. I have a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines where my research focused on modelling risk for autonomous decision making, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Baylor University (Sic’em bears!), where I did research related to bone and fossil reconstruction while working with Dr. Caroline Skurla and Dr. Brain Garner in the biomechanics and biomaterials labs. I was also a founding member of Bear Bots (Baylor’s robotics club), and founder and President of Sexual Identity Forum, an LGBTQ etc. student group (SIF’em bears!).

My most recent industry work was with Sphero as a mechanical engineer, first in their hardware department and later in their Social Robotics Group (now Misty Robotics). During my time there I worked on various products including BB-8 and Ultimate Lightning McQueen.

In addition to my academic and industry work, I currently facilitate Corvallis Trans Support, which is a group that works to provide emotional support and combat food, clothing, and housing insecurity for trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks in the Corvallis area. This work is done as a community outreach project of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis.

Thanks for reading!