Brad Nelson is the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH-Zürich and is the founder of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems where he leads the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab.

His primary research direction lies in extending robotics research into emerging areas of science and engineering. His current research is in microrobotics, biomicrorobotics, and nanorobotics, including efforts in robotic micromanipulation, microassembly, MEMS (sensors and actuators), mechanical manipulation of biological cells and tissue, nanofabrication and NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS).

Prof. Nelson received a B.S. (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984, an M.S. (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Minnesota in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics (School of Computer Science) from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. During these years he also worked as an engineer at Honeywell and Motorola, and served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana, Africa. In 1995 he became Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota in 1998, and Professor at ETH in 2002.

He was named to the Scientific American 50, Scientific American magazine's annual list recognizing fifty outstanding acts of leadership in science and technology. One of his lab's microrobots appears in the 2012 Guinness Book of World Records as "Most Advanced Mini Robot for Medical Use," and his lab won the International Robocup Nanogram Soccer Competition in 2007 and 2009, both times the event was held at Robocup. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the ASME and has won over a dozen best paper awards at major robotics conferences and journals. Professor Nelson serves on a number of editorial boards, has chaired several international workshops and conferences, has served as the head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, the Chairman of the ETH Electron Microscopy Center (EMEZ), and is a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.