Summary
Ryan Sinnet is a co-founder of Miso Robotics and served as the company’s CTO and Chief Research Officer from its founding in 2016 until early 2024. A Caltech-trained electrical engineer with a PhD in robotics from Texas A&M University, Sinnet invented and patented much of the robotics and machine-learning technology behind Flippy, Miso’s AI-powered kitchen robot. Before commercial cooking robots, he spent years teaching bipedal robots—including NASA’s Valkyrie humanoid—to walk with human-like gaits.
Career
Sinnet taught himself BASIC programming at age five from his father’s manual and worked as a teenage web developer for startups before studying electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 2007. At Caltech he played men’s basketball and befriended future Miso co-founder David Zito through pickup games, as well as postdoctoral scholar Aaron Ames, who shared his interest in control theory. When Ames joined the faculty at Texas A&M University, he invited Sinnet to join his research group.
From 2008 to 2015, Sinnet completed an M.S. and Ph.D. in robotics at Texas A&M under Ames, focusing on bipedal locomotion and energy-shaping control. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and worked with NASA Johnson Space Center’s team in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, developing walking algorithms and software for NASA’s Valkyrie humanoid robot. His research included motion-capture studies of human walking and optimization methods for efficient, human-like robot gaits; he has said he wrote the world’s first paper on robot walking without flat feet. His scientific work has been cited more than 1,500 times, and he has been granted numerous patents.
After finishing his doctorate in 2015, Sinnet returned to Los Angeles and briefly worked as a control software engineer, including on software and AI tools for a sustainable solar-powered farming project. He wanted work that translated outside the lab more quickly than academic humanoid research. In 2016, Zito—by then founding CEO of Miso Robotics—recruited him to join co-founder Robert Anderson and the rest of the founding team.
At Miso, Sinnet invented and patented core robotics and machine-learning technology powering Flippy and CookRight, designed the architecture of Miso’s shared software platform, grew a software team of roughly 30 engineers and scientists, and delivered commercial restaurant pilots. He held titles including CTO and Chief Research Officer, and later VP of Advanced Technologies and Special Projects, before leaving the company in February 2024 after nearly eight years. His personal interests have since included crypto and generative AI.
Source Notes
This profile draws on Ryan Sinnet’s LinkedIn profile, his personal resume and patents page, and a Caltech Alumni Magazine feature (“Kitchen Aid”) covering his path from bipedal robotics research to co-founding Miso. Academic and NASA/Valkyrie details are corroborated across his resume and LinkedIn; Miso tenure end date (February 2024) is from his LinkedIn employment history.