Faculty Profile

Degrees

PHD, Columbia University; MS, Columbia University; BS, United States Military Academy

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Bio

Kevin Craig attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, earned varsity letters in football and baseball, and graduated with a B.S. degree and a commission as an officer in the U.S. Army. He played on the United States Baseball Team in the First Intercontinental Cup Championship in Italy in 1973. After serving in the military, he attended Columbia University and received the M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees. While in graduate school, he worked in the mechanical-nuclear design department of Ebasco Services, Inc., a major engineering firm in NYC, and taught and received tenure at both the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and Hofstra University. While at Hofstra, he worked as a research engineer at the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC) Automation and Robotics Laboratory. He received the 1987 ASEE New Engineering Educator Excellence Award, a national honor. In 1989, he joined the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). At RPI, he served as Director of Core Engineering, the first two years of the School of Engineering, and as Chair of the Engineering Science Interdisciplinary Department. As a tenured full professor of mechanical engineering, he taught and performed research in the areas of mechatronic system design and the modeling, analysis, and control of multidisciplinary engineering systems. With significant continuous funding from both industry and government, he developed the Mechatronics Program at RPI, which included an extensive teaching and research laboratory and several undergraduate and graduate courses in mechatronics. He collaborated extensively with the Xerox Mechanical Engineering Sciences Laboratory (MESL), an offshoot of Xerox PARC, during this time. During his 18 years at RPI, he graduated 37 M.S. students and 20 Ph.D. students. While at RPI, he authored over 30 refereed journal articles and over 50 refereed conference papers. Emphasis in all his teaching and research was on human-centered, model-based design, with a balance between theory and best industry practice. At RPI, he received the two highest awards conferred for teaching: the 2006 School of Engineering Education Excellence Award and the 2006 Trustees’ Outstanding Teacher Award

From 2007 to 2014, he wrote a monthly column on mechatronics for practicing engineers in Design News magazine. Over the past 30 years, he has conducted hands-on, integrated, customized, mechatronics workshops for practicing engineers nationally and internationally, e.g., at Xerox, Procter & Gamble, Rockwell Automation, Johnson Controls, Brady Corp., Pitney Bowes, and Siemens Health Care in the U.S., and at Fiat and Tetra Pak in Italy. He is a Fellow of the ASME and a member of the IEEE and the ASEE.

After a national search, in January 2008, he was chosen to be the Robert C. Greenheck Chair in Engineering Design, a $5 million endowed chair, at Marquette University. His mission was to integrate multidisciplinary design and discovery learning throughout the entire college, in all years and in all departments. He transformed students, faculty, curricula, and facilities throughout the college and created a new engineering education mindset and culture for innovation. He was given the 2013 ASEE North-Midwest Best Teacher Award and the 2014 ASME Outstanding Design Educator Award, a society award. He graduated his 21st Ph.D.

In the fall of 2014, he returned to the Hofstra University School of Engineering and Applied Science as a tenured full professor of mechanical engineering. He is the Director of the Mechatronics Laboratory, which he created with $1M funding from NYS / Hofstra, and also the Director of the Center for Innovation, a new center he created to collaborate with business and industry to foster innovation, where all intellectual property (IP) belongs to the sponsor. Recent clients include ThermoLift, P&G, and Toro. He has taught graduate courses as an Adjunct ME Professor at both Stony Brook University and NYU Tandon School of Engineering.Recent Publications:Craig, K. (2021). Mechatronic Capstone Design Course. Mechatronics and Applications, 2(1), 47-60.Craig, K. (2021). Mechatronic Model-Based Design Applied to an H-Bot Robot. Mechatronics and Applications, 2(2), 1-18.

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Teaching Interests

Mechatronic System Design
Modeling, Analysis and Control of Dynamic Systems
Fluid Power Mechatronics
Precision Machine Design

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Research Interests

My research interests are the application of model-based design in modern engineering practice. Specifically, I focus on Mechatronic Systems. Mechatronic systems are multidisciplinary engineering systems. Mechatronics is the synergistic integration of mechanical, electronic, computer, and control systems in the design process, from the very start of the design process. I also focus on Control Design for Mechatronic Systems, in particular the integration of feedback, feedforward, and observer-based control strategies. Precision machine design is the last focus, in particular the transformation of traditional machine design into mechatronic machine design with integrated controls and design for reliability.

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Recent Courses Taught

Course	Title	Level
CSC 159	ROBOTICS	Undergraduate
CSC 276	ROBOTICS	Graduate
ENGG 130	MDLG, ANLYS & CNTRL DYNMC SYST	Undergraduate
ENGG 141	MECHANICAL ANALYSIS & DESIGN	Undergraduate
ENGG 142	MECHATRONIC SYSTEM DESIGN	Undergraduate
ENGG 143D	DESIGN OF MULTIDISPLY ENGG SYS	Undergraduate
ENGG 179	CONTROL SYSTEMS ENGG	Undergraduate
ENGG 197R	SP TPC: INTRO TO ROBOTICS	Undergraduate