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Thomas Secord

Associate Professor and Program Director, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

  • Education

  • PhD, 2010, Mechanical Engineering, MIT
    MS, 2007, Mechanical Engineering, MIT
    BS, 2005, Mechanical Engineering (Mathematics Minor), University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

  • Expertise
  • Dynamics and control of mechanical systems, medical device design, cardiac implant durability testing, medical robotics, smart materials and actuators.
  • Research Interests

  • Dynamics and control of mechanical systems,cardiac medical devices, medical robotics, smart materials and actuators.

Tom joined the full-time faculty as an assistant professor in the fall of 2016. Prior to joining St. Thomas, he spent six years at Medtronic working on the development and testing of bio-prosthetic trans-catheter heart valves. His work at Medtronic encompassed many aspects of structural design, accelerated testing, and regulatory approval for implantable devices.

Before entering industry, Tom completed his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. His doctoral research focused on the design of smart material actuators for robotics. Tom is the author of several peer reviewed publications, a book chapter, and numerous conference papers. He received the Best Paper Award from the IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems and was a Best Automation Paper Award finalist at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. His current research interests are centered on overcoming actuator performance limitations at the intersection of robotics and medical devices.

View the Secord Lab for Biomedical Robotics and Mechatronics website.

Courses:

ENGR 410 - Control Systems and Automation
ETLS 555 - Advanced Product Design
ETLS 810 - Advanced Controls