Currently, Sylvia works in the Center for Robotics and Biosystems at Northwestern University under Ed Colgate and Michael Peshkin. She is developing a new class of wearable haptic devices to understand what the necessary cues are for rendering realistic virtual textures on the finger pad. Her work spans the fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, material science, computer science, and psychology. She has presented her work internationally and received multiple awards and fellowships. She is also a ceramics instructor at Northwestern.

Sylvia received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied mechanical engineering and art and specialized in mechanical design. She has worked in engineering, art, and business roles in the United States and Singapore and will be joining Sony in Japan to work on AR/VR technologies.