IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008 - 28

BY
JULIA C. KELLER

Engineer/Entrepreneur
Inspired by R2-D2

I

"I wasn't encouraged by anyone to get into engineering. Not one person," says Helen
Greiner, cofounder and board chairman of iRobot, the million-dollar robotics company
that creates robots to handle dull and dangerous tasks. Though people may not have
encouraged Greiner to get into engineering, one robot did. Star Wars' R2-D2, the
plucky trash-can-sized robot piqued her interest. Greiner says of R2, "He can't express
himself through speech, but he can through his bleeps and bloops; and he's brave and
smart. He comes across as a more sympathetic character," she says comparing R2 to his
taller, more human-like robot compatriot, C3P0. "C3P0? He was a protocol droid," she
says dismissively. Star Wars sparked the imagination of a ten-year-old who later won
many accolades as an engineer, such as a place in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, and who has gone on to be a leader in the robotics field.
But more than Star Wars, Greiner credits her engineering acumen to self-directed
learning on a Tandy Radio Shack
computer in the late 1970s. "I was
STAR WARS IGNITED
geek from way back. I would
HELEN GREINER'S
spend literally hours hacking away
IMAGINATION, BUT HACKING
at the computer," she says. Even
ON A RADIO SHACK
though interests often change as
children grow older and discover
COMPUTER DEVELOPED HER
new passions, Greiner stuck with
ENGINEERING ACUMEN
computers, math, engineering,
and other left-brained activities throughout high school, joining the math and chess
teams. "A lot of my male friends were told by guidance counselors and other people 'You
should study math or science.' But no one said that to me." Despite the lack of encouragement from school counselors, Greiner knew that The Massachusetts Institute of Technology would be a good fit for her. She remembers watching MIT's "270 competition"
for autonomous robot design on the television science series NOVA. The 270
competition grew out of a mechanical engineering design lab class in
which engineers were given a design challenge and a box of parts. In the
contest, engineers from different schools went head-to-head with MIT engineers. "I saw that on TV, and I thought they looked like they're having fun."

At Home at MIT
Greiner was often the only woman in her high school science and math
clubs and was therefore undaunted about applying to MIT, where the
ratio of women to men was 1 to 10 at the time. Even though women
were in the minority, Greiner finally felt at home at MIT. "It was great
for me that the woman I did meet made me realize that I fit in." It was a

PHOTO COURTESY OF IROBOT

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2008.925800

28

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2008

1942-065X/08/$25.00©2008 IEEE



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2008

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