Rebecca Fisher

About

Dr. Rebecca Fisher is a professor in the School of Life Sciences and the Department of Foundational Sciences, as well as the director of anatomy for the John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering at Arizona State University. She serves as the co-director of three clinical skills and anatomy courses for first- and second-year medical students. Dr. Fisher earned her BA with honors and distinction from Stanford University, followed by MPhil and PhD degrees from Yale University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Trained as an anatomist and paleontologist, Dr. Fisher's research focuses on analyzing the functional anatomy of vertebrates and cephalopods, and she collaborates with engineers to design bio-inspired robots. Additionally, she investigates the use of extended reality, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies in medical education. Prior to joining ASU, Dr. Fisher was a founding faculty member, director of the Gross Anatomy Laboratory, and interim chair of the Department of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, where she designed the anatomy curriculum and gross anatomy laboratory. She has received ten teaching awards, including the Basmajian Award from the American Association for Anatomy, and was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honors Society for her leadership in fostering empathy and humanism…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Composite material
• Materials science
• Nanotechnology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Biology
• Biological system
• Genetics
• Anatomy

Selected publications

• Highly stretchable self-sensing actuator based on conductive photothermally-responsive hydrogel

  Materials Today · 2021 · 215 citations

  Soft robots built with active soft materials have been increasingly attractive. Despite tremendous efforts in soft sensors and actuators, it remains extremely challenging to construct intelligent soft materials that simultaneously actuate and sense their own motions, resembling living organisms’ neuromuscular behaviors. This work presents a soft robotic strategy that couples actuation and strain-sensing into a single homogeneous material, composed of an interpenetrating double-network of a nanos…

  PublisherDOI

• Heterogeneous Hydrogel Structures with Spatiotemporal Reconfigurability using Addressable and Tunable Voxels

  Advanced Materials · 2021 · 59 citations

  Stimuli-responsive hydrogels can sense environmental cues and change their volume accordingly without the need for additional sensors or actuators. This enables a significant reduction in the size and complexity of resulting devices. However, since the responsive volume change of hydrogels is typically uniform, their robotic applications requiring localized and time-varying deformations have been challenging to realize. Here, using addressable and tunable hydrogel building blocks-referred to as…

  PublisherDOI

• Comparative Genomics Reveals Accelerated Evolution in Conserved Pathways during the Diversification of Anole Lizards

  Genome Biology and Evolution · 2018-01-18 · 55 citations

  articleOpen access

  Squamates include all lizards and snakes, and display some of the most diverse and extreme morphological adaptations among vertebrates. However, compared with birds and mammals, relatively few resources exist for comparative genomic analyses of squamates, hampering efforts to understand the molecular bases of phenotypic diversification in such a speciose clade. In particular, the ∼400 species of anole lizard represent an extensive squamate radiation. Here, we sequence and assemble the draft geno…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Anatomical and histological analyses reveal that tail repair is coupled with regrowth in wild-caught, juvenile American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)

  Scientific Reports · 2020 · 21 citations

  Reptiles are the only amniotes that maintain the capacity to regenerate appendages. This study presents the first anatomical and histological evidence of tail repair with regrowth in an archosaur, the American alligator. The regrown alligator tails constituted approximately 6-18% of the total body length and were morphologically distinct from original tail segments. Gross dissection, radiographs, and magnetic resonance imaging revealed that caudal vertebrae were replaced by a ventrally-positione…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• New Insights on the Control and Function of Octopus Suckers

  Advanced Intelligent Systems · 2020-01-09 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  Octopuses utilize their suckers for a myriad of functions such as chemo‐ and mechanosensing, exploring and manipulating objects, anchoring the body during crawling, and navigating through narrow passages. The sucker attachment mechanism grants the octopus the ability to perform many of these tasks. The goal of this study is to analyze sucker function and control through the assessment of pull‐off forces under different conditions. Sucker pull‐off forces are measured in Octopus bimaculoides (thre…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kenro Kusumi

  Arizona State University

  36 shared

• Brent Adrian

  Arizona State University

  27 shared

• Heather F. Smith

  Midwestern University

  19 shared

• Hamidreza Marvi

  Arizona State University

  18 shared

• Ximin He

  University of California, Los Angeles

  18 shared

• Jeanne Wilson‐Rawls

  Arizona State University

  16 shared

• Daniel M. Aukes

  Arizona State University

  16 shared

• Matthew M. Peet

  16 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Stanford University

• Other

  Yale University

• Ph.D.

  Yale University

• Other, Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution

  Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Awards & honors

• Basmajian Award from the American Association for Anatomy
• Inducted into the Gold Humanism Honors Society
• Fellow of the American Association for Anatomy (2021)

Similar researchers at Arizona State University

• Carolyn Comptonh-118
• David Sklarh-38
• Douglas Lakeh-33