Ali Shtarbanov is a Bulgarian-American interdisciplinary platform architect, interaction designer, and electrical engineer. His prior works range from interactive interfaces with haptic feedback that bridge the gap between the physical and the digital; to tools & development platforms that enable researchers, engineers, and artists to prototype rapidly & easily. 

Ali is the inventor of the FlowIO Platform and the  founder of SoftRobotics.IO. He is also a Ph.D. candidate at MIT Media Lab.  He spent a year working as a Research Scientist intern at Meta Reality Labs whre he developed the SleeveIO Platform for haptic feedback. Ali has also completed a research internship at IBM Research. Previously, he earned two bachelor degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University with highest honors, graduating in the top 1%, and also a Master's degree in Media, Arts, and Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is now pursuing his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and focusing on system design and platform deployment for soft robotics.