Mechanical Engineering Doctoral Student Rho Ma’s Varied Passions Inspire New Designs

Rho Ma with blue hair and red shirt stands before a rocky beach

The path to the most rewarding work is rarely straight. Ask Rho Ma, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering who combines biology, additive manufacturing, and art to create innovative functional designs—for applications in fields including toy design, soft robotics, and product development.

Students inspect a large green insect on Rho Ma's arm

At the UMD Insect Zoo, Ma gives undergraduates in the VIPs Program get special access to insects.

Hailing from Alhambra, California, the NSF Graduate Research Fellows Program (GRFP) recipient began their academic career in entomology and biology and became interested in how the form of an organism shapes what it is able to do. Over time, Ma came to view creative instincts as essential to scientific progress. “I realized that creativity and science are not mutually exclusive,” Ma says. “There is no singular way I need to present myself in order to become the scientist I want to be.”

Collaborations fuel creativity and curiosity

Learning to work comfortably with unanswered questions helped push Ma toward engineering. Now, in the Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing (BAM) Laboratory, Ma is leveraging their knowledge of arthropod mechanics to inspire new technologies. “Graduate school has been especially rewarding,” they say. “It has given me the opportunity to work across distinct fields and engage with people who bring different perspectives to the same questions.”

One of those people helping Ma navigate that interdisciplinary path is their advisor and the BAM Lab’s principal investigator, Associate Professor Ryan Sochol, who ensures Ma prioritizes their creative side and health alongside their work. Another is Assistant Research Professor Molly Carton, who runs the Exoskeleton Explorers project within the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program, and with whom Ma connects about both science and visual art.

Arachnids and arthropods for the whole family

Points of pride along Ma’s winding academic journey include contributing exhibit illustrations for the Bohart Museum of Entomology, developing a scientific illustration course for the Bodega Marine Laboratory, and collecting trap-jaw spiders in Chile as a Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Graduate Fellow. Ma continues their outreach work with the Smithsonian Institution, including designing and presenting fun, family-friendly programs for the NMNH learning space Q?rius. (Don’t miss the Halloween program.)

Rho Ma holds up her oSTEM conference badge

Ma (left) sat on a graduate student panel at the 2025 oSTEM national conference held in Baltimore.

For the VIP Program, Ma works with Carton to teach students about arthropods so that they can teach others. Ma’s student researchers are using high-speed videos of spider predatory strikes and spider CT scans to study movement and translate those observations into a 3D animated flexible spider structure for educational events, including Maryland Day.

Painting, ceramics, and an affinity for fountain pens

Outside of the classroom and lab, Ma gives themself the time and space needed to be creative. With their background in painting and sculpture, they are currently enjoying a ceramics class and they have joined local fountain pen affinity group DC Metro Pen Crew. As a member of UMD’s chapter of oSTEM, Ma sat on a graduate student panel at the 2025 national conference held in Baltimore.

The connections among those interests are not always obvious at first, and Ma acknowledges that working across disciplines can sometimes make belonging difficult. “Trying to bridge everything together is hard. You don’t always feel like you belong to one specific group—in work and life,” they say. “I simultaneously have imposter syndrome and know I can do this.”

Published October 5, 2026