Dr. Nancy Amato, Unocal professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, served as the program committee chair for the 2015 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) held in Seattle.
Four additional computer science and engineering representatives served in leadership positions at the conference. Dr. Robin Murphy, Raytheon professor, served as the Exhibitions Committee chair; Dr. Shawna Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher, was the chair of the Web Committee; Chinwe Ekenna, a graduate student, served as the Developing Countries Forum chair; and former student Dr. Lydia Tapia was chair of the Student Activities Committee.
Amato led a committee of 50 robotics professionals to organize the international conference. To increase the representation of women, this program committee was the first to be comprised solely of women.
“We wanted the opportunity to emphasize and celebrate the diversity of roboticists in our research community,” Amato said. “Not just women, but also students and researchers from developing countries.”
Amato’s involvement in the conference began long before the main event. The Parasol Laboratory and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering hosted the Senior Program Committee (SPC) and Texas A&M Robotics Symposium in January to finalize the conference details and listen to robotics experts.
“The main objective of the SPC meeting is to select the papers and plan the conference program,” Amato said. “However, we had to take advantage of this unique opportunity to hear from such a remarkable cadre of robotics and automation researchers from around the world.”
With more than 3,000 attendees, the 2015 ICRA conference set an all-time record. The three-day conference, had 940 technical paper presentations from researchers representing over 40 countries.
ICRA is the flagship robotics conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. As an international conference, it serves as a premier forum for robotics researchers to present their work. The conference included plenary and mini-plenary sessions, paper presentations, workshops and robot challenges.