Dr. Nancy Amato, Unocal professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, was named to Robohub’s list of “25 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About.”
Now in its third year, Robohub publishes the list annually to recognize women in robotics.
Amato was selected because of the impact she has made on robotics and computer science for numerous years. Among those contributions, her paper on probabilistic roadmap methods is seen as one of the most important papers in the field. For these contributions, she has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Amato serves as a member of the board of directors for the Computing Research Association where she is also the chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research.
Most recently, Amato served as the program committee co-chair of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Seattle. This year, to recognize the numerous women in robotics, both the senior program committee and organizing committee were comprised solely of women.
“We always take the opportunity to emphasize and celebrate the diversity of roboticists in our research community,” Amato said. “Not just women, but also students and researchers in developing countries.”
At Texas A&M, Amato serves as the co-director of the Parasol Laboratory and is noted for her research on the algorithmic foundations of motion planning, computational biology, computational geometry and parallel computing.