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Home: Our Faculty: Brooklyn College Faculty:

Frank W. Grasso

Assc Professor   Department: Psychology   Location: 4113b James Hall   Phone: 718-951-5000 x6020   Fax: 718-951-4814   Email:   Frank W. Grasso's Web site

Born: Brookline Massachusetts, High School: Burlington High School Burlington, MA, B.Sc.: Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Ph.D:. Neuroscience and Behavior UMASS Amherst, Post-doctoral: Boston University BioMedical Engineering, BUMP, Woods Hole, MA, Research Assistant Professor: BUMP, Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole, MA, Substitute Assistant Professor: Brooklyn College. Education: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS - AMHERST - 1994 (NEUROSCIENCES) B.Sc., Worcester Polytechnic Institute - 1984 (Biology and BioTechnology) Areas of Expertise: The BioMimetic & Cognitive Robotics Lab is dedicated to the discovery of mechanisms that control & coordinate behavior. We use biomimetic robots and computer simulations in parallel with animal behavior studies to validate theories of behavior. The neural, evolutionary & ecological constraints on behavior are central to our work and we think a complete understanding of a behavior must include these 3 constraints. We take the computational perspective that models must be both simple & powerful. Books and Publications Grasso F W. "Octopus sucker-arm coordination in grasping and manipulation." America Malacological Bulletin, 2008, 24, 13-23. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2008 Grasso F W and Setlur P. "Inspiration, simulation and design for smart robot manipulators from the sucker actuation mechanism of cephalopods." Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, 2007, 2, 1-12. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2007 Walker, Ian D., Darren M. Dawson, Tamar Flash, Frank W. Grasso, Roger T. Hanlon, Binyamin Hochner, William M. Kier, Christopher C. Pagano, Christopher D. Rahn, Qiming M. Zhang (2005) Continuum Robot Arms Inspired by Cephalopods. [R] In the proceedings of the 2005 SPIE Conference on Unmanned Ground Vehicle Technology IV, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 2005, pp. 303-314. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2006 Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums Frank W. Grasso "From cephalopod tentacles toward ballistic continuum-robotic manipulators." Biological Approaches For Engineering Southampton, England, UK, March 17 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008 Frank W. Grasso. "Animal Behavior and Fluid Mechanics." Winter School in Chemical Discrimination & Localization using Biologically-Based Olfactory Processing Institute for Nonlinear Science, San Diego, CA January 10, 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008 Frank W. Grasso. "Studying Chemical Localization with BioMimetic and Bio-Inspired Robots." Winter School in Chemical Discrimination & Localization using Biologically-Based Olfactory Processing Institute for Nonlinear Science, San Diego, CA January 12, 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008 Bohl, Corentin L. and Frank W. Grasso. "Estimation of the potential monk parakeet invasions in America and Europe using ecological niche modeling." Poster Presentation, Boston Behavior Group Annual Meeting, Woods Hole, MA May 26, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007 Frank W. Grasso. "Chemical tracking in a turbulent world: lobsters do it, why not robots?" Dept. of Chemistry Brooklyn College, CUNY, New York Friday August 3, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007 Grasso, Frank W. "Individual Prey Sucker-Arm Coordination in Octopus During Grasping and Manipulation of Objects." Boston Behavior Group Annual Meeting, Woods Hole, MA May 26, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2007 Grasso, Frank W. "The Evoultion of Learning in Chemo-Orientation Mechanisms." Origins and Evolution of Chemoreception NSF-National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Chapel Hill, NC June 4, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007 Grasso, Frank W. "Sucker-Arm Coordination in Octopus During Grasping & Manipulation of Objects." Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Pheonix Arizona. January 5, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2007 Kloskowski, Kamil, Zohar Pasternak, and Frank W. Grasso, "Flow-biased levy walk model of fish foraging: parameter sensitivity study." Poster Presentation, Boston Behavior Group Annual Meeting, Woods Hole, MA May 26, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007 Pasternak, Zohar and Frank W. Grasso. "Coordination of conflicting behaviors a comparison of two fuzzy logic systems." Poster Presentation, Boston Behavior Group Annual Meeting, Woods Hole, MA May 26, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007 Frank W. Grasso and Corentin L. Bohl. "Evidence for entrainment of an invasive monk parakeet population to human activity patterns." 11th Meeting of Congress of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology July 25th 2006, Tours, FRANCE. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006 Grasso, Frank W. "Sucker-Arm Coordination Octopus in Grasping and Manipulation." American Malacalogical Society Meeting. Seattle, Washington August 2, 2006. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006