Noah J. Cowan

6.4k total citations · 2 hit papers
106 papers, 4.0k citations indexed

About

Noah J. Cowan is a scholar working on Biomedical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering and Cognitive Neuroscience. According to data from OpenAlex, Noah J. Cowan has authored 106 papers receiving a total of 4.0k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 32 papers in Biomedical Engineering, 28 papers in Aerospace Engineering and 26 papers in Cognitive Neuroscience. Recurrent topics in Noah J. Cowan's work include Biomimetic flight and propulsion mechanisms (17 papers), Soft Robotics and Applications (16 papers) and Robotic Locomotion and Control (15 papers). Noah J. Cowan is often cited by papers focused on Biomimetic flight and propulsion mechanisms (17 papers), Soft Robotics and Applications (16 papers) and Robotic Locomotion and Control (15 papers). Noah J. Cowan collaborates with scholars based in United States, Canada and Türkiye. Noah J. Cowan's co-authors include Robert J. Webster, Allison M. Okamura, Gregory S. Chirikjian, Joseph M. Romano, Vinutha Kallem, Eric S. Fortune, Jin Seob Kim, Kyle B. Reed, Daniel E. Koditschek and Sarah A. Stamper and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Communications.

In The Last Decade

Noah J. Cowan

105 papers receiving 3.8k citations

Hit Papers

Nonholonomic Modeling of Needle Steering 2006 2026 2012 2019 2006 2008 100 200 300 400 500
What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

  1. Nonholonomic Modeling of Needle Steering
    2006 511 citations Noah J. Cowan, Gregory S. Chirikjian et al. profile →
  2. Mechanics of Precurved-Tube Continuum Robots
    2008 388 citations Noah J. Cowan et al. profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name h Career Trend Papers Cites
Noah J. Cowan United States 32 2.2k 1.2k 771 739 696 106 4.0k
Roger D. Quinn United States 43 3.8k 1.7× 1.1k 1.0× 1.7k 2.3× 1.1k 1.4× 344 0.5× 230 5.8k
Tianmiao Wang China 38 2.8k 1.3× 1.2k 1.1× 1.5k 1.9× 1.2k 1.6× 644 0.9× 280 5.1k
Qiang Huang China 38 4.8k 2.2× 1.7k 1.5× 1.5k 2.0× 508 0.7× 832 1.2× 673 7.3k
Reinhard Blickhan Germany 46 6.2k 2.8× 608 0.5× 426 0.6× 1.7k 2.3× 79 0.1× 161 8.5k
Hao Su United States 37 2.1k 1.0× 737 0.6× 659 0.9× 1.7k 2.3× 4.0k 5.8× 100 9.9k
Isao Shimoyama Japan 39 3.2k 1.5× 478 0.4× 1.1k 1.4× 789 1.1× 174 0.3× 469 6.3k
J. Edward Colgate United States 47 3.2k 1.4× 2.3k 2.0× 3.7k 4.8× 441 0.6× 363 0.5× 197 7.9k
William M. Kier United States 27 2.8k 1.3× 1.0k 0.9× 1.2k 1.6× 276 0.4× 78 0.1× 65 4.7k
Michael A. Peshkin United States 44 2.5k 1.1× 1.8k 1.6× 1.7k 2.2× 116 0.2× 381 0.5× 195 5.9k
Javaan Chahl Australia 35 963 0.4× 235 0.2× 169 0.2× 1.2k 1.6× 1.4k 2.0× 205 4.2k

Countries citing papers authored by Noah J. Cowan

Since Specialization
Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Noah J. Cowan's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Noah J. Cowan with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Noah J. Cowan more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Noah J. Cowan

Since Specialization
Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Noah J. Cowan. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Noah J. Cowan. The network helps show where Noah J. Cowan may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Noah J. Cowan

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Noah J. Cowan. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Noah J. Cowan based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Noah J. Cowan. Noah J. Cowan is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

20 of 20 papers shown
1.
Biswas, Debojyoti, Eduardo D. Sontag, & Noah J. Cowan. (2025). An exact active sensing strategy for a class of bio-inspired systems. European Journal of Control. 86. 101361–101361. 1 indexed citations
2.
Olson, William, et al.. (2025). Muscle spindles provide flexible sensory feedback for movement sequences. Cell Reports. 44(11). 116452–116452.
3.
Cowan, Noah J., et al.. (2024). Adaptive Gait Modeling and Optimization for Principally Kinematic Systems. 12571–12577. 3 indexed citations
4.
Mongeau, Jean-Michel, et al.. (2024). Moving in an Uncertain World: Robust and Adaptive Control of Locomotion from Organisms to Machine Intelligence. Integrative and Comparative Biology. 64(5). 1390–1407. 4 indexed citations
5.
Biswas, Debojyoti, Andrew Lamperski, Kathleen Hoffman, et al.. (2023). Mode switching in organisms for solving explore-versus-exploit problems. Nature Machine Intelligence. 5(11). 1285–1296. 12 indexed citations
6.
Cowan, Noah J., et al.. (2022). Control becomes habitual early on when learning a novel motor skill. Journal of Neurophysiology. 128(5). 1278–1291. 5 indexed citations
7.
Pantula, Aishwarya, et al.. (2022). Untethered unidirectionally crawling gels driven by asymmetry in contact forces. Science Robotics. 7(73). eadd2903–eadd2903. 54 indexed citations
8.
Lindsay, Theodore H., Noah J. Cowan, Michael H. Dickinson, et al.. (2022). Neuromuscular embodiment of feedback control elements in Drosophila flight. Science Advances. 8(50). eabo7461–eabo7461. 7 indexed citations
9.
Cowan, Noah J., et al.. (2021). De novo learning versus adaptation of continuous control in a manual tracking task. eLife. 10. 38 indexed citations
10.
Freudenberg, J.S., et al.. (2019). Haptic Feedback and the Internal Model Principle. 568–573. 3 indexed citations
11.
Stamper, Sarah A., et al.. (2019). Sensory Cues Modulate Smooth Pursuit and Active Sensing Movements. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 13. 59–59. 10 indexed citations
12.
Biswas, Debojyoti, et al.. (2018). Closed-Loop Control of Active Sensing Movements Regulates Sensory Slip. Current Biology. 28(24). 4029–4036.e4. 25 indexed citations
13.
Cowan, Noah J., Mustafa Mert Ankaralı, Jonathan P. Dyhr, et al.. (2014). Feedback Control as a Framework for Understanding Tradeoffs in Biology. Integrative and Comparative Biology. 54(2). 223–237. 76 indexed citations
14.
Carver, Sean, Eric S. Fortune, & Noah J. Cowan. (2013). State-estimation and cooperative control with uncertain time. 104. 2990–2995. 4 indexed citations
15.
Cowan, Noah J., et al.. (2012). An almost global estimator on SO(3) with measurement on S 2. 1780–1786. 2 indexed citations
16.
Cowan, Noah J., Erick Chastain, Daril A. Vilhena, J.S. Freudenberg, & Carl T. Bergstrom. (2011). Nodal dynamics determine the controllability of complex networks. arXiv (Cornell University). 2 indexed citations
17.
Cowan, Noah J., Erick Chastain, Daril A. Vilhena, J.S. Freudenberg, & Carl T. Bergstrom. (2011). Controllability of Real Networks. arXiv (Cornell University). 2 indexed citations
18.
Kallem, Vinutha & Noah J. Cowan. (2007). Image-guided Control of Flexible Bevel-Tip Needles. PubMed. 2007. 3015–3020. 44 indexed citations
19.
Park, Wooram, et al.. (2006). Diffusion-Based Motion Planning for a Nonholonomic Flexible Needle Model. 4600–4605. 139 indexed citations
20.
Cowan, Noah J. & Daniel E. Koditschek. (2001). Vision -based control via navigation functions.. Deep Blue (University of Michigan). 3 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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