RAS Initiates Developing Country Faculty Engagement Program
After a successful pilot, RAS in 2021 launched an expanded Developing Country Faculty Engagement Program. The goal of the program is to help faculty in developing countries compete successfully in publishing their research at top RAS conferences and journals by connecting them with assigned RAS mentors.
Priority for acceptance to the program was given to faculty members from a university or college located in an IEEE identified developing country. Applicants were also required to be RAS members with research experience in robotics and automation.
Each developing country faculty member (the mentee) will be supported for up to two years to work with a mentor. RAS will fund the collaboration according to an approved proposal and budget submitted by the mentee and mentor.
Some of the responsibilities of the mentee include:
- Write co-authored RAS conference/journal papers (with mentor) based on research
- Write a paper as a lead author towards the end of the mentorship period
- Become involved in the mentor’s research activities, including group meetings and seminars
- Create or expand a local RAS student chapter
- Visit mentor’s lab (if possible) and regularly join mentor’s lab meetings
- Attend an RAS conference to present a paper
- Establish collaboration with researchers during an RAS conference
- Yearly joint report by the mentor and mentee regarding their accomplishments
2021 Awardees
MENTEE |
MENTOR |
PROJECT |
Moctar Mossi Idrissa Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey, Niger |
Volkan Isler University of Minnesota, USA |
Crops/Weeds Classification from Aerial Imagery |
Koena Mukherjee National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India |
Nancy Amato and Marco Morales University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA |
Task and Motion Planning for search and rescue operation with a particular focus on sampling-based methods |
Issarapong Khuankrue King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand |
Subramanian Ramamoorthy University of Edinburgh, UK |
Teaching the Robot by Guidance: Developing the human-robot collaboration with a cognitive architecture model |
Syed Tanweer Shah Bukhari University of South Asia, Pakistan |
Emily Hand and David Feil-Seifer University of Nevada, Reno, USA |
Control Framework for Human Robot Interaction using Cognitive Robots |
Hassan Jaleel Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan |
Jeff S. Shamma University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA |
Distributed Multi-robot Coordination Under Adversarial Environments |
Francisco Cuellar Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru |
Marcelo H Ang Jr National University of Singapore, Singapore |
Autonomous robots in underground mining: the implementation and validation of mobile robots to identify risks of falling objects in underground mining |
The following RAS Volunteers were instrumental in creating and implementing this program.
- Jyh-Ming Lien, George Mason University - USA
- Tony Maciejewski, Colorado State University - USA
- Ron Lumia - Texas, USA