RoboLaunch: Come Explore Robotics!
Ever wondered what robotics is? Come explore the world of robotics with RoboLaunch. The initiative offers a series of talks and conversations from diverse pioneers through which you can explore robotics and how research/education can be fun!! The initiative introduces you to broad topics in robotics through talks and interactive workshops.
RISS RoboLaunch is a robotics outreach & broadening participation initiative, making robotics more accessible. Our RoboLaunch Discord Server aims to foster an inclusive global learning community, and we invite you to join us.
Learn More About the Upcoming 2023 Schedule
| Presenter | Session Description | Date/Time | YouTube Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yonatan Bisk Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy |
Yonatan Bisk is an assistant professor of computer science in Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute. His group works on grounded and embodied natural language processing, placing perception and interaction as central to how language is learned and understood. Previously, he received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working on unsupervised Bayesian models of syntax, before spending time at USC’s ISI (working on grounding), the University of Washington (for commonsense research), and Microsoft Research (for vision+language). | 1/9/2024
12:00 PM EST |
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| Gustavo Freitas Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais |
Gustavo Freitas is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering (DEE), Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. His research focuses on field robotics, mainly on its applications to environmental monitoring, agriculture, mining, and oil and gas production systems, with close collaborations with the Petrobras Robotics Laboratory, and the Instituto Tecnológico Vale (ITV) Robotics Laboratory, Brazil. He received his B.Sc. degree in Control and Automation engineering from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC) and his M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees in Control, Automation, and Robotics from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil, during which he spent one year at Carnegie Mellon University as a Visiting Researcher with Prof. Marcel Bergerman and Prof. Sanjiv Singh. | 12/12/2023
12:00 PM EST |
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| Stelian Coros Associate Professor at ETH Zurich |
Stelian Coros is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Computational Robotics Lab (CRL). Through fundamental advances in numerical simulation and motion control algorithms, his research bridges the fields of robotics, visual computing and computational fabrication. Applications of his work range from studying the principles of dexterous manipulation and legged locomotion to computation-driven design for new breeds of bioinspired robots. He is the recipient of an Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Award, an Intel Early Career Faculty Award, a Research Initiation Award by the US National Science Foundation, and in 2020 he was awarded an ERC Consolidator grant. Prior to joining ETH Zurich, he was an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in 2011. | 12/04/2023
10:00 AM EST |
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| Marynel Vázquez Assistant Professor at Yale University |
Marynel Vázquez is an Assistant Professor in Yale’s Computer Science Department, where she leads the Yale Interactive Machines Group (IMG). Her main area of research is Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Before Yale, she was a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab working on the JackRabbot project. She closely collaborated with Disney Research while she was a Ph.D. student in the Robotics Institute (RI) at Carnegie Mellon University, and worked on assisted photography while pursuing her M.S. degree at the RI as well. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering at Universidad Simón Bolívar. | 11/15/2023
12:00 PM EST |
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| Grad School Prep | The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting a “How to Apply to Graduate School” webinar. Come by to get an insight in the graduate school admissions process from current professors and PhD students, as well as a look at the daily life of a graduate student. For more information on dates and times, and to submit any questions you have to be answered during the webinar, visit our website. | 10/20/2023 1:00 PM EDT |  |
| Sebastian Scherer Associate Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Wenshan Wang Systems Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University |
Sebastian Scherer, an Associate Research Professor at CMU and director of the AirLab, researches advanced autonomy for robotic systems, primarily unmanned aircraft, with Systems Scientist Wenshan Wang. The AirLab focuses on enabling autonomy for unmanned aircraft to operate at low altitude in cluttered environments. The lab has shown the fastest and most tested obstacle avoidance on an Yamaha RMax, the first obstacle avoidance for micro aerial vehicles in natural environments, and the first and fastest automatic landing zone detection and landing on a full-size helicopter. Their work is not exclusive to aerial vehicles either as they explore learning-based approaches with rugged environments on a Yamaha Viking ATV. | 10/19/2023 4:00PM EDT |  |
| Grad School Prep | The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting a “How to Apply to Graduate School” webinar. Come by to get an insight in the graduate school admissions process from current professors and PhD students, as well as a look at the daily life of a graduate student. For more information on dates and times, and to submit any questions you have to be answered during the webinar, visit our website. | 10/18/2023 7:00 PM EDT | |
| Zachary Manchester Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University |
Zachary Manchester is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Robotic Exploration Lab. His goal is to enable robotic systems that can match or exceed the level of agility, efficiency, and robustness demonstrated by humans and animals, especially in challenging environments. His research focuses both on the development of new algorithms and hardware to bring these algorithms to life. Zachary obtained both his Bachelor and PhD from Cornell University in 2009 and 2015, respectively. Before joining Carnegie Mellon University, he was an Assistant Professor at Stanford University, a Posdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University and worked as an Aerospace Engineer at NASA. | 10/18/2023 4:00 PM EDT |  |
| Simon Lucey Professor of CS at University of Adelaide |
Simon Lucey, PhD, is the Director of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML) and a professor in the School of Computer Science (SCS), at the University of Adelaide. Prior to this he was an associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute (RI) in Pittsburgh, USA; where he spent over 10 years as an academic. He was also Principal Research Scientist at the autonomous vehicle company Argo AI from 2017-2022. He has received various career awards, including an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2009-2013). Simon’s research interests span computer vision, machine learning, and robotics. He enjoys drawing inspiration from AI researchers of the past to attempt to unlock computational and mathematical models that underlie the processes of visual perception. | 10/17/2023 4:00PM EDT |  |
| Grad School Prep | The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is hosting a “How to Apply to Graduate School” webinar. Come by to get an insight in the graduate school admissions process from current professors and PhD students, as well as a look at the daily life of a graduate student. For more information on dates and times, and to submit any questions you have to be answered during the webinar, visit our website. | 10/17/2023 9:00 AM EDT | |
| Kristina Monakhova Assistant Professor at Cornell University |
Kristina Monakhova is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, starting Fall 2024. Until then, she is a postdoctoral fellow at MIT working with Sixian You and George Barbastathis, and supported by the MIT Postdoctoral Fellowship for Engineering Excellence. She works on co-designing optics and algorithms to create better, smaller, and more capable cameras and microscopes. She obtained my PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley with Laura Waller. During her PhD, she was affiliated with the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab and was supported by the NSF GRFP fellowship. My PhD dissertation was on Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Computational Imaging. Kristina was also a RISS scholar in 2014. | 10/16/2023 4:00 PM EDT |  |
| John M. Dolan Principal Systems Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University |
Dr. John M. Dolan received his B.S.E. from Princeton University and his master’s and doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), all in mechanical engineering. He is a senior faculty member at CMU’s Robotics Institute (RI), where he directs the Master of Science in Robotic Systems Development (MRSD) and RI Summer Scholars Programs. He has extensive experience in multirobot systems and autonomous navigation and control, and was the Behaviors team lead for CMU’s winning entry in the DARPA 2007 Urban Challenge race, which led to the current revolution in autonomous driving. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and co-founder of three startup companies, including Ottomatika, which led to the current AV company Motional. | 10/13/2023 4:00PM EDT |  |
| Zackory Erickson Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University |
Zackory Erickson is an Assistant Professor in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Robotic Caregiving and Human Interaction (RCHI) Lab. His research focuses on developing new robot learning, mobile manipulation, and sensing methods for physical human-robot interaction and healthcare. Zackory received his PhD in Robotics and M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and B.S. in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. | 10/12/2023 4:00 PM EDT |  |
| Howie Choset Kavčić-Moura Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University Lu Li Project Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University |
Howie Choset, a professor of robotics and co-director to the Biorobotics Lab at CMU, researches biologically inspired systems with Project Scientist Lu Li. The Biorobotics Lab is most known for its snake robots and other biologically inspired systems. They have impacted fields including surgery, manufacturing, on-orbit maintenance, recycling, autonomy, and search and rescue. Recently the lab has been contributing to robotic modularity, multi-agent planning, information-based search, and skill learning. | 10/10/2023 4:00 PM EDT |  |
| Oliver Kroemer Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University |
Oliver Kroemer is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Intelligent Autonomous Manipulation Lab. His research focuses on developing algorithms and representations to enable robots to learn versatile manipulation skills over time. Before joining the CMU Robotics Institute in 2018, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California (USC). He received his Masters and Bachelors degrees in engineering from the University of Cambridge in 2008. From 2009 to 2011, he was a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. In 2014, he defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Technische Universitaet Darmstadt and was a finalist for the 2015 Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award for the best robotics Ph.D. thesis in Europe. | 10/09/2023 4:00 PM EDT |  |
| Sergio Sedas Professor, Business Consultant, and Creator EGADE Business School |
Dr. Sedas, a professor at EGADE Business school and the creator of Highly Valued Leader, works with leading managers and directors that seek to inspire and lead transformation, innovation and growth. Throughout his 30+ year career, he has founded and directed multiple high-tech companies that designed and built intelligent manufacturing solutions with robots for major companies in the automotive industry.
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09/20/2023 4:00 PM EDT
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Organizers
Rachel Burcin
RISS Co-director &
Global Programs Manager
Carnegie Mellon University
John M. Dolan, Ph.D.
RISS Director &
Principal Systems Scientist
Carnegie Mellon University
