Presenter

Maya Cakmak is the Robert E. Dining Career Development Associate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington, where she directs the Human-Centered Robotics lab. She received her PhD in Robotics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012, after which she spent a year as a post-doctoral research fellow at Willow Garage, one of the most influential robotics companies. Her research interests are in human-robot interaction, end-user programming, and assistive robotics. Her work aims to develop robots that can be programmed and controlled by a diverse group of users with unique needs and preferences to do useful tasks. Maya's work has been published at major Robotics and AI conferences and journals demonstrated live in various venues, and has been featured in numerous media outlets. She and her students have collaborated with and developed tools for robotics companies like Savioke, Fetch Robotics, and Hello Robot. She received an NSF CAREER award (2015), a Sloan Research Fellowship (2018), Early Career Spotlights at R:SS (2018) and IJCAI (2019), and an CRA-WP Anita Borg Early Career Award (2022).