I am Ali Shtarbanov and my mission is to reduce barriers to creativity and to make innovation and prototyping in emerging fields faster and more accessible for everyone. I develop general-purpose tools and platforms that enable makers, researchers, artists, and designers to rapidly turn ideas into reality. Inspired by platforms like Arduino and Raspberry PI that liberated electronics and computing for everyone, my current work focuses on building and deploying on a global scale novel hardware & software platforms for rapid prototyping with soft robotics, programmable materials, and wearable haptics.

I am currently a Ph.D. student at MIT Media Lab.

Research Projects and Collaborations

Touchibo

Multimodal Texture-Changing Robotic Platform for Shared Human Experiences

Other Works

Modular Organizer for Eyeglasses

Personal Design Project

Dual Microphone Noise Reduction

Undergraduate Independent Study. LabView Implementation

PaperTouch

Capacitive-Touch Storytelling & Drawing Interface

Concepts

WaterBended

Interactive Interface + Storyboard for an Escape Room that uses static electricity to bend water. Product Design Course at MIT

ParticleFlow

Interactive Challenge + Storyboard for an Escape Room based on the Chladny Plate Phenomenon. Graduate Product Design Course at MIT

WaterLevitator

Interactive Interface + Storyboard for an Escape Room based on the Hydrodynamic Levitation Effect. Product Design Course at MIT

MovieNet

Personalized Movie Recommendations via Physiological Responses of Viewers

General-Purpose PCB Designs

Universal MCU Shield

A wiring shield that drastically simplifies wiring complexity during rapid prototyping with most microcontrollers

Vortex Generator Driver

A driver board suitable for any speaker-based vortex generator with up to 6 transducers

Device Libraries for Arduino/C++