International Women’s Day
The 8th March is International Women’s Day and this year, we are celebrating women in the Robotics industry. Here are a few women to watch who have already made significant advancements and achievements in the industry.
Nora Ayanian
Nora Ayanian is an Associate Professor and Director of the Automatic Coordination of Teams (ACT) Lab at the University of Southern California (USC). She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2011 and was a Postdoctoral Associate between 2011-2013 at the Distributed Robotics Lab, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Nora and her team at the ACT Lab specialise in coordinated multirobot systems and conduct research focused on creating end-to-end solutions, so teams of robots can be employed for large-scale projects.
Jessica Hodgins
Jessica Hodgins is a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science department at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her PhD in Computer Science in 1989 from Carnegie Mellon University. Last year, Hodgins joined Facebook’s AI Research division (FAIR) to lead a new lab in Pittsburgh. In 2017, Hodgins received the Steven Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics, making her the first female recipient of the award. Hodgins was then named an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) fellow in 2018 for her contributions to computer science, specifically character animation, humanoid robotics and human simulation.
Angelica Lim
Angelica Lim is an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in Canada. She graduated SFU with a BSc in Computing Science, followed by Kyoto University, Japan, with an MSc and PhD in Computer Science. Lim is currently the Principal Investigator for the SFU ROSIE Lab. ROSIE stands for Robots with Social Intelligence and Empathy. She has always imagined robots as kind and compassionate, and wondered if they could have feelings and how that would work. At the SFU ROSIE Lab, the team led by Lim works on 3 main areas: they build robots that are designed to interact with humans, they develop smart AI software which is designed to help robots understand humans and they create new AI algorithms to implement models of the human mind based on neuroscience, psychology and developmental science.
These are just a few examples of how women are making a difference in the Robotics industry. They have already achieved so much and we, at Talos, look forward to seeing their impending advancements. It is truly inspirational to see more and more women shaping the Robotics industry, the world and, indeed, our future.
Resources:
- https://robohub.org/25-women-in-robotics-you-need-to-know-about-2016/
- http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~ayanian/
- http://act.usc.edu/
- https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2018/04/cue-the-robots/
- https://robohub.org/25-women-in-robotics-you-need-to-know-about-2018/
- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jkh/
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-17/facebook-is-relying-on-robotics-to-lure-ai-researchers
- https://thetartan.org/2018/8/20/scitech/fairlab
- https://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/news/hodgins-named-2018-acm-fellow
- https://www.siggraph.org/participate/awards/2017-steven-coons-award-jessica-hodgins
- http://www.angelicalim.com/
- https://www.rosielab.ca/