For the first time at any major robotics conference, all 18 speakers of the Texas A&M Robotics Symposium will be female leaders in the field.
The symposium kicks off Wednesday with a keynote address by Ruzena Bajcsy, a professor from University of California, Berkeley. The 17 presenters after the keynote speaker will give talks the following day on their robotics research.
“Each speaker will give a brief, high-level talk focusing on her current research,” said Nancy Amato, professor in the computer science department. “Topics will cover a broad spectrum of cutting-edge work and current research challenges by an amazing cadre of robotics and automation researchers from around the world.”
Amato and Lynne Parker from the University of Tennessee were approached by the senior leadership of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and asked to take on leadership roles. As a result, Amato is the program chair and Parker is the general chair.
“We then put together the stellar team you can see on the website that includes top researchers from all over the world,” Amato said.
Amato, who is program chair of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation’s senior program committee, said the committee originally planned to meet in College Station to choose submitted research papers for a May robotics conference. The fact that so many high-level robotics researchers were near Texas A&M was too good an opportunity to pass up, she said.
“Since the SPC members will be traveling here for the SPC meeting, I decided to take advantage of that and organize the Texas A&M Robotics Symposium so that our students, faculty and staff could have a chance to hear from these world recognized researchers whose expertise covers the spectrum of robotics and automation,” Amato said.
The Texas A&M Robotics Symposium will start at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday in the Emerging Technologies Building. The event is free and open to the public.