50 Women in Robotics you need to know about 2023

Eneni Abban is a Robotics Engineer, STEM Communicator, Founder of Anime and Chill and Women's Engineering Society Winner 22/23. She founded The Techover to empower other women, sharing her tech journey and resources.

Simona Aracri combines engineering and oceanography to develop innovative technology for better understanding ocean processes and tackling climate change. She combines using sensors, data policy and soft robotics in Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

Diana Baicu drives technological advancement through her creations. Matt, the ultimate device testing robot is in use on three continents, in multiple industries. Adapta helps people by bringing efficiency to everyday monotonous tasks.

Lynne Baillie is a Human-Computer & Human-Robot Interaction expert with 100+ peer-reviewed papers and 15+ years of experience in user-centered design and research management, gaining prestigious research grants for HRI and multimodal interaction.

Danielle Boyer is an Ojibwe robotics inventor, advocate for youth in STEM, and founder of The STEAM Connection. She's changing lives through innovative education and language revitalization.

After working as a space robotics engineer, Grace Brown, Mechatronics grad from Melbourne, co-founded a humanoid companion robotics company Andromeda Robotics. She is also a Vogue Codes Future Innovator Winner 2021.

With a career spanning over 20 years at Daimler, Joanna Buttler has held many positions including program director for autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia. She is dedicated to ensuring safety in autonomous technology for the trucking industry.

Jen Jen Chung researches perception, planning and learning for robotic mobile manipulation, algorithms for robot navigation through human crowds, informative path planning and adaptive sampling. She is an RSS 2023 Pioneer.

Nancy Cornelius, Boston Dynamics co-founder and its first employee, held various roles including CFO and VP of Engineering during her 21-year tenure. She retired in 2013 upon Google's acquisition.

Dipshikha Das, a leading robotics engineer in India, excels in navigation and software development at Addverb. Her expertise and mentoring have been instrumental in advancing the field, and she now leads a team developing top-tier autonomy software.

As well as developing use cases for collaborative robotics at Alisys, Jorgina Díaz Torres, is the President of HispaRob, the Spanish robotics industry forum, supporting research, conferences, business development and the promotion of robotics.

Oyinmiebi Elena Ebikefe is a robotics and AI engineer from Nigeria. She holds a first-class honours degree in electrical and electronics engineering, which led her to explore industrial automation, becoming hooked on robotics and AI.

Aleksandra Faust is a globally recognized expert in robotics and AutoML, focusing on autonomy, sequential decision making and deep reinforcement learning. Her research is centered around safe and scalable autonomous systems for social good.

Bronwyn Fox, a pioneer in 3D-printing carbon fiber composites, has won many awards both for her research and her science leadership creating multimillion dollar partnerships, driving innovation in manufacturing, advanced materials and robotics.

Stephanie Garcia has played a key role in creating the San Antonio Robotics Cluster, SATX Robotix, creating awareness of the economic opportunities with the emerging robotics industry. She is recognized on the Top 35 Latinas in Tech list.

Gurpreet Ghataore, a Chartered Engineer and Tech Manager at MTC, leads automation, mechatronics and electronics manufacturing product development. She's an award-winning advocate for automation accessibility and diversity in STEM.

Paloma González Robles, a Mechatronics professor, leads many projects including one aiming to create a versatile space vehicle for moon missions out of a donated car, incorporating sensor tech, AI, machine learning, and autonomy.

Melissa Greef specializes in aerial robots, vision-based navigation, and safe learning-based control at the Robora Lab. She is also a member of Ingenuity Labs Robotics Institute, the Vector Institute for AI and a Woman Grandmaster in chess.

Florencia Grosso developed a neural network-based brain-computer Interface to aid paralyzed patients for her Master's thesis at the University of Buenos Aires. She started as an electronics engineer but has found her passion in building with code.

Didem Gürdür Broo’s research interests are interoperability, sustainability, complexity, data science, AI, and knowledge discovery within cyber-physical systems. She aims to blend systems thinking, design thinking, and future studies.

Amy Kyungwon Han's research focuses on developing robotic systems, actuators, sensors, and mechanisms that are applicable to grasping and the medical field. She works in the HERO Healthcare Robotics Lab.

Sylvia Herbert received the ONR Young Investigator Program Award in 2022 for her work in constructing and adapting control barrier functions for guaranteed safe control of autonomous systems. She leads the Safe and Autonomous Systems Lab at UCSD.

Mirielle Hildebrandt is a lawyer, philosopher and legal scholar laying the foundations for computational law, assessing the fundamental rights impact of autonomous systems in society, and developing the legal protection by design strategy.

Josie Hughes works in bioinspired robotics, exploring applications for agri-food, human collaboration, robot scientists and also environmental monitoring, developing new methods for designing robotics technologies.

Jana Košecká researches the acquisition of static, dynamic, and semantic models of environments by means of visual sensing, object recognition, scene parsing, and human-robot interaction. She is IEEE Fellow and Visiting Researcher at Google.

Amy LaViers works at the intersection of dance and robotics, bridging traditional engineering training, kinesthetic learning, and principles of choreography. Her book Making Meaning with Machines is published by MIT Press in October.

Jennifer has made pioneering contributions to the programmable assembly of soft functional, structural, and biological materials, with 30+ patents plus the world's first 3-D printer capable of spitting out fully functional electronics.

Martina Mara studies human-robot relationships and is a member of the Austrian Council for Robotics. As well as speaking publicly about the impacts of robots in society, she is also an advocate for more women in robotics, not more female robots.

Natasha McCarthy has years of experience leading national policy, working across engineering to deliver evidence-based policy advice, and to ensure that engineering serves society, which is critical to the emergence of autonomous systems.

Annette McClelland has bootstrapped Tekuma from a university idea into a company changing the way humans interact with drone technology via their revolutionary, intuitive controller.

After 20+ yrs as a NASA engineer and project manager, Dawn McIntosh is now lead of space systems at Fugro, working on Australia's lunar rover in partnership with NASA as part of the Trailblazer Moon to Mars Mission, and assisting the Artemis Mission.

Reuth Mirsky's research involves methods like parsing, planning, knowledge-based diagnosis, and reinforcement learning. She works on applications in multi-agent systems with long term goal of constructing a guide robot for visually impaired people.

Marcela Múnera graduated as a Bioengineer from Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia before completing her studies in Europe and joining Bristol Robotics Lab to work on human factors in experimental robotics systems and biomechanics.

Marcia O'Malley researches haptics and the design and control of wearable robotic devices for training and rehabilitation. She is Editor-in-Chief of ICRA Editorial Board and Associate Editor-in Chief for Transactions on Haptics.

Anna's areas of expertise are in Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics. Currently building robots at Amazon, she has developed new efficient algorithms for autonomous vehicles, mobile manipulation, and tactile object localization.

Hong Qiao is an internationally-recognized and highly-cited pioneer researcher in high-precision robotic manipulation and biologically-inspired robotic cognition and manipulation.

After holding various robotics research and software engineer roles, Tanya Raghuvanshi co-founded Peer Robotics, on a mission to make industrial robots more collaborative and easier to operate and reprogram.

Tahira Reid Smith's research involves the quantification and integration of human-centered considerations in engineering systems. Her work has been funded by the NSF, Procter & Gamble, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

As well as heading Open Science at the word's leading publisher of Open Access books and journals, Natalia Reinic Babic is also Managing Editor of the International Journal of Advanced Robotics Systems.

Kiki Ren is an experienced robotics manager, first with HIK Robotics and now with VisionNav Japan, a global supplier of autonomous industrial vehicles and intralogistics automation solutions.

Eugénie Rives leverages her deep expertise in robotics, AI, and other emerging technologies to incubate and derisk breakthrough technologies across a diverse range of fields at X, the moonshot factory, solving some of the world’s biggest challenges.

Whitney Rockley is co-founder of a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in Industrial internet of Things companies like Clearpath Robotics, where she is currently a Board Member.

A neuroscientist by education but an engineer at heart, Fran uses her knowledge to entertain and excite audiences of stage and screen, including four recent seasons of ABB's The Robot Podcast.

Yu Jun Tan engineers smart materials for biorobots. She has received the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 (TR35) Asia Pacific, MRS Postdoctoral Award 2021, and Best Paper Award & Best Poster awards in renowned international conferences.

Belén Torres is a robotics software developer, and data science teacher. She also teaches robotics at high schools where she introduces girls to science and technology with a focus on art, gaming, and social impact.

Ana Luisa Trejos has worked in research for wearable robotics for rehabilitation and motion assistance for over 20 years and is currently Canada Research Chair in Wearable Mechatronics, working on non intrusive robotics solutions for everyday life.

Vandi Verma has been engaged in robotic operations on Mars since 2008 working with rovers Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance, and Ingenuity helicopter. She leads about 170 JPL roboticists developing future mission technology.

Awarded a Future Leader of Manufacturing by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Amanda Vern is in charge of remote operations and customer success for Phantom Autos, providing an autonomous logistics fleet.

Defy-Hi Robotics is a portable roof-mounted building envelope inspection robot. As well as running her own companies and working with global brands, Widin is the author of "Catapult: a woman's guide to building a 7-figure business".

Maria Yablonina is an architect, researcher, and artist in computational design and digital fabrication. Her work combines architecture and robotics, producing spaces and robotic systems that can construct themselves and change in real-time.

Frances Zhu was a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow from 2014 to 2019. Her research interests include flux pinned interface applications, spacecraft system architectures, robot dynamics, estimation, and controls, ML and space robotics.

Patricia de Boer leads NVIDIA's global automotive ecosystem for autonomous driving R&D and Automotive AI with 20+ years of experience in AI, IoT, and disruptive innovation. She holds an Electrical Engineering degree and a corporate MBA.