Mark Yim was born in Cheverly, Maryland. He obtained a B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Johns Hopkins University in 1987 and attended Stanford University where he completed a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 1989 and 1994, respectively. After graduating from Stanford, he joined a startup company (Virtual Technologies) before moving to Xerox PARC, where he obtained a DARPA grant to continue his work in modular reconfigurable robots. He left industry for academia, coming to the University of Pennsylvania for his current position as the Gabel Family Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is also involved with the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab. His research interests focus on robotics, mechanical systems and design, modular reconfigurable robots and locomotion (Polybot), MEMS and batch fabrication techniques, and brute force digital time optimal control.