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Maja Matarić
Photo: UCLA Library, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons17

Maja Matarić

American computer scientist

Maja Matarić is an American computer scientist. She is the Chan Soon-Shiong Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, with courtesy appointments in Neuroscience and in Pediatrics, at the University of Southern California.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Maja Matarić (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1965.1

About

She is a founding pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics, and author of the book The Robotics Primer (MIT Press).

From Wikipedia’s article on Maja Matarić, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedMassachusetts Institute of Technology3
  • Date not recordedUniversity of Kansas3

Maja Matarić was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, now Serbia. She immigrated to the United States in her teens, with her mother, Mirjana N. Matarić, who was an accomplished author and educator. Her father, an electrical engineer, passed away from cancer before they immigrated.

Matarić received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987, with a minor in Psychology/Cognitive Science. She received a Master of Science in Computer Science and AI in 1990 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science and AI in 1994, both from MIT. Her master's thesis was titled "A Model for Distributed Mobile Robot Environment Learning and Navigation" and her doctoral dissertation was titled "Interaction and Intelligent Behavior". Her master's and doctoral advisor was Prof. Rodney A. Brooks.

From Wikipedia’s article on Maja Matarić (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: computer scientist, university teacher, roboticist.8

  • Since 1997Worked at Vanguard University of Southern California4 6
  • Date not recordedWorked at University of Southern California4 5
  • Date not recordedWorked at Brandeis University4
  • Date not recordedFounded Embodied7

Matarić started her academic career as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Brandeis University, where she founded her Interaction Lab. She moved to the University of Southern California (USC) in 1997. At USC, she was the founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC), and the co-director of the USC Robotics Lab, in addition to continuing to grow her Interaction Lab.

After obtaining tenure, Matarić also became actively involved in university leadership: she served as the elected president of the faculty and the Academic Senate (2006-2007), as the Vice Dean of Research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering (2006-2019), and then as the interim USC Vice President of Research (2019-2020). Matarić was a visiting faculty researcher at Google in 2022, and then spent her two-year sabbatical as a Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind.

From Wikipedia’s article on Maja Matarić (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • Born1965, Belgrade9
  • CitizenshipYugoslavia, United States10

Awards

  • 2023Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences11 16
  • 2020ACM Fellow11 15
  • 2016AAAI Fellow11 14
  • 2013Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Awards11 13
  • 2009Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring11
  • 2007Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science11 12
  • Date not recordedIEEE Fellow11

Sources

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