The IEEE-RAS Outstanding Women in Robotics & Automation (WiRA) Paper Awards recognise excellence in early-career and student research led by women at the IEEE RAS flagship conferences ICRA, CASE and IROS. At each conference, two awards are presented: the Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award and the Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award.

Calls for nominations are announced ahead of each conference on our LinkedIn page. Questions can be sent to [email protected].

2026

IROS 2026

Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award

• Winner: Feifei Qian – “Failure Mechanisms and Risk Estimation for Legged Robot Locomotion on Granular Slopes”
• Finalist: Madi Dian – “NeuroCommitSSM: Decision-Centric Shared Autonomy for Safe Assistive Manipulation via EEG–EMG–ET Commit Readiness”
• Finalist: Sheila Sutjipto – “Safety-aware Skill Adaptation for Reinforcement Learning in Dynamic Environments”

Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award

• Winner: Amanda Weckerly – “Design, Modeling, and Performance of a Robotic Zipper for Self-Donning Clothing”
• Finalist: Yumin Lee – “LT-Mem: Volatility-Aware Spatio-Temporal Memory for Lifelong Scene Understanding”
• Finalist: Risako Suzuki – “Designing Autonomous Behavioral Switching in Eight-Armed Octopus-like Soft Robot: Physical Reservoir Computing Approach”

CASE 2026

Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award

• Winner: Di Wang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University – “A spatio-temporal parameter tracking method for the modeling of a dynamic network”
• Finalist: Chao Yu, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School – “AED: Automatic Discovery of Effective and Diverse Vulnerabilities for Autonomous Driving Policy with Large Language Models”

Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award

• Winner: Jessica Ehrbar, Hamburg University of Technology – “Gradient-Based Viewpoint Planning Using Approximated Coverage Computation”
• Finalist: Yike Shen, Zhejiang University – “Design and Implementation of a Human-Skin-Inspired Tactile Fingertip”
• Finalist: Meaghan White, The University of Queensland – “When 99.8% Is Not Enough: Closed-Loop Evaluation Exposes the Metric Gap in Learned Microgrid Control”
• Finalist: Magdalena Posch, Technical University of Munich – “Uncertainty Propagation in Hierarchical Human-Centered Digital Twins for Dependable Human-Robot Collaboration”

Awards Committee: Nadia Figueroa, Emmanuel Dean Leon, Heeyoung Kim, Hyun-Jung Kim.

ICRA 2026

Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award

• Winner: Scarlett Raine – “Automated Coral Spawn Monitoring for Reef Restoration: The Coral Spawn and Larvae Imaging Camera System (CSLICS)”
• Finalist: Chao Yu – “JuggleRL: Mastering Ball Juggling with a Quadrotor via Deep Reinforcement Learning”

Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award

• Winner: Jiwon Choi – “KISS-IMU: Self-supervised Inertial Odometry with Motion-balanced Learning and Uncertainty-aware Inference”
• Finalist: Ivana Collado Gonzalez – “Towards Versatile Opti-Acoustic Sensor Fusion and Volumetric Mapping for Safe Underwater Navigation”
• Finalist: Yunfei Luan – “One-Shot Autofocus via User-Adaptive Gaze Control for Robot-Assisted Microsurgery”

2025

IROS 2025

Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award

• Winner: Julia Starke, University of Luebeck – “The KIT Robotic Hands – A Scalable Humanoid Hand Platform With Multi-Modal Sensing and In-Hand Embedded Processing”

Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award

• Winner: Nikita Greenidge, University of Leeds – “Designing a Magnetic Endoscope for In Vivo Contact-Based Tissue Scanning Using Developable Roller”
• Finalist: Ruohan Wang, Zhejiang University – “Advancing Robot Interaction Safety: A Teleoperated Shared-Control Approach Using a Lightweight Force-Feedback Exoskeleton”
• Finalist: Beverley Gorry, Queensland University of Technology – “Image-Based Relocalization and Alignment for Long-Term Monitoring of Dynamic Underwater Environments”
• Finalist: Efimia Panagiotaki, University of Oxford – “GraphSCENE: On-Demand Critical Scenario Generation for Autonomous Vehicles in Simulation”

CASE 2025

Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award

• Winner: Rania Rayyes – “AI-based Framework for Robust Model-Based Connector Mating in Robotic Wire Harness Installation”

Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award

• Winner: Ni Mu – “Safety-Guaranteed Policy Composition via Generalized Policy Improvement for Autonomous Vehicles”
• Finalist: Yongzi Yu – “Empowering PHM Applications with Time Series Foundation Models: A Unified Multi-Task Learning Approach”
• Finalist: Weizhi Lin – “Automated Qualification of 3D-Printed Products for Personalized Manufacturing”

ICRA 2025

Outstanding WiRA Early Career Contribution Award

• Winner: Yen-Ling Kuo – “Diff-DAgger: Uncertainty Estimation with Diffusion Policy for Robotic Manipulation”
• Finalist: Fethiye Irmak Dogan – “GRACE: Generating Socially Appropriate Robot Actions Leveraging LLMs and Human Explanations”
• Finalist: Merihan Alhafnawi – “Express Yourself: Enabling Large-Scale Public Events Involving Multi-Human-Swarm Interaction for Social Applications with MOSAIX”

Outstanding WiRA Student Paper Award

• Winner: Xiaolin Fang – “KALM: Keypoint Abstraction using Large Models for Object-Relative Imitation Learning”
• Finalist: Despina-Ekaterini Argiropoulos – “Optimal Torque Distribution via Dynamic Adaptation for Quadrupedal Locomotion on Slippery Terrains”
• Finalist: Giulia Ramella – “Rapid Online Learning of Hip Exoskeleton Assistance Preferences”