Early Government or Industry Career Award in Robotics and Automation

About the Award

Description: To recognize individuals working in Government or Industry who have made an identifiable contribution or contributions which have had a major impact on the robotics and/or automation fields.
Established: 1999
Prize: $1,000, Plaque and Certificate
Funding: Funded by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society through an endowment managed by the IEEE Foundation.
Eligibility: Any current member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society who is in the early stage of his/her career in the robotics and/or automation field, i.e., less than 7 years after being granted his or her highest earned academic degree up to a doctorate degree. This period is defined as the time between the date on the nominee's diploma and the close of nominations for the award.
Basis for Judging: 1) Current and potential impact of the submitted contribution (or contributions) on the fields of robotics and/or automation; 2) Contributions to the Society and the profession; 3) Educational contributions. Nominations for the award will be solicited by the Awards Committee; a nomination may be made by someone familiar with the individual’s work. Three references will be required. The nominator and the references must be Society members. 
Presentation: At the annual IEEE ICRA held in the spring of each year.

Nomination form:



Winners of this Award

2023

Karol Hausman
"For major contributions to scalable robot learning algorithms"

2022

Joshua Mehling
"For extraordinary contributions to the advancement of space robotic systems and their innovative spin-off application in industry and other government missions"

2021
Huan Tan
"For outstanding leadership and contribution of advancing service robotics research in the industry and creating real-world products and applications"

2020
Aleksandra Faust
"For contributions to the integration of machine learning with robot motion planning and control"

2019
Award not presented

2018
Alexander Kernbaum
"For his work on robotic actuation and the invention of new transmission mechanisms"

2017
Award not presented

2016
Ioan A. Sucan
"For contributions to open source software for robot motion planning"

2015
Leila Takayama
"For bringing empirical social science research into the development of personal and telepresence robotics"

2014
Torsten Kroeger
"For his scientific contributions to online trajectory generation and sensor-based motion control of robot systems widely used in industry and academia"

2013
Matei Ciocarlie
"For major contributions to robotic manipulation research, released as open-source and widely adopted and used in both academia and industry"
Radu B. Rusu
"For contributions to creating and leading an open source ecosystem that fosters technology transfer in 3D perception between academia and industry"

2012
Rainer Bischoff
"For leadership and outstanding contributions to the cooperation of academia and industry, and for managing and promoting significant technology transfer in the area of industrial and service robotics"

2011
Lianqing Liu
"For contributions to the development of high efficiency nanorobotics and nanomanipulation systems"

2010
Leandro Barajas
"For pioneering the use of diagnostics and prognostics research in large-scale industrial robotics and automation applications"

2009
Award not presented

2008
Nicola Tomatis
"For major contributions in bridging mobile robotics research to real world business applications, for promoting robotics on European and international levels, and for contributions to the Expo-02 and Nesbot projects"

2007
Ralf Koeppe
"For outstanding contributions to the design and control of a lightweight robot for industrial applications"

2006
Jingshan Li
"For his significant contribution to the technical field of automation science and engineering, in such areas as modeling and analysis of manufacturing systems, performance evaluation and bottleneck ID"

2005
Ayanna Howard
"For contributions to soft-computing techniques for robot reasoning and learning in space applications"

2004
Paolo Pirjanian
"For contributions to mobile robots and commercially practical robots and vision systems"

2003
Mingjun Zhang
"For contributions to micro/nano-scale life science automation"

Easy Links