IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2018 - 108

Young Professionals

Getting Involved for a
Rewarding Experience
By Arash Ajoudani and Aleksandra Faust

he mission of the IEEE Robotics
and Automation Society (RAS)
Young Professionals (YP) Committee is to introduce career
opportunities in robotics research and
industry, create cross-disciplinary collaborations among YPs, and support and
advise new graduates regarding their
early career goals.
One high-impact activity of the RAS
YP Committee is hosting YP luncheons
at the IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
and the IEEE/Robotics Society of Japan
International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems. These events bring
together YPs and representatives of successful work in academia and industry
(e.g., paper award winners, major robotics competition winners, IEEE technical committee members, and others)
to enjoy a meal
and discuss relevant topics that
Another initiative
can help us to
launched by the YP
achieve the YP
mission.
committee is the
This year, at
Young Reviewers
ICRA in Brisbane, Australia,
Program.
we organized a
networking event
with chairs and cochairs of RAS technical committees, with whom YPs were
able to meet and have informal conversations centered on new technologies,
future growth in the field, and how to

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2018.2853411
Date of publication: 12 September 2018

108

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

get involved and contribute to RAS
technical committee work.
Another initiative launched by the
YP committee is the Young Reviewers
Program (YRP), which is intended to
introduce young RAS members to best
practices for peer-reviewing scientific
papers. Details about the program and
instructions on how to participate are
available at http://www.ieee-ras.org/
publications/young-reviewers-program.
Introducing the RAS YP Cochairs
Arash Ajoudani
Arash Ajoudani earned
his Ph.D. degree in
robotics and automation f r o m C e ntro
"E Piaggio," University of Pisa, Italy, and
the Advanced Robotics Department, Italian Institute of
Technology (IIT), Genoa, Italy, in 2014.
His Ph.D. thesis was a finalist for the
Georges Giralt Ph.D. award in 2015, an
award for the best European Ph.D.
thesis in robotics. He is currently a tenure-track scientist and the leader of
the IIT Human-Robot Interfaces and
Physical Interaction Laboratory. He
was a finalist for the best manipulation paper award at ICRA in 2012, a
winner of the best student paper
award at ROBIO in 2013, a finalist for
the best oral presentation award at
Automatica in 2014, a finalist for the
best interactive paper award at Humanoids in 2016, and the leader of the winning team for the KUKA innovation
award in 2018.

september 2018

Ajoudani is the author of Transferring Human Impedance Regulation Skills
to Robots, part of the Springer Tracts in
Advanced Robotics series, along with
several publications in journals and
international conferences as well as
book chapters. He currently serves as
executive manager of the RAS YRP and
chair and representative of the RAS YP
Committee. He has also served as a
member of the Scientific Advisory
Committee and as an associate editor
for several international journals and
conferences such as IEEE Robotics and
Automation Letters, the IEEE International Conference on Biomedical
Robotics and Biomechatronics, and the
International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics. His main research
interests include physical human-
robot interaction and cooperation,
robotic manipulation, robust and
adaptive control, assistive robotics,
and telerobotics.
Aleksandra Faust
Aleksandra Faust is a
technical lead and
senior researcher at
Google Brain specializing in robot
intelligence. Previously, she led ma chine learning efforts for self-driving
car planning and controls at Waymo
and Google X, and she was a re searcher at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
where she worked on satellites and
(continued on page 116)

http://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/young-reviewers-program

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2018

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