Fall 2012: Distinguished robotics engineer to speak at Freshman Convocation Aug. 25

Freshman Convocation, sponsored by the University Honors College, formally welcomes the Class of 2016 and their families to UAA, and inspires students with a sense of discovery and creativity to last them throughout their years of study. It will take place Sunday, Aug. 25 at 3:30 p.m. in the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.

UAA faculty and all incoming freshmen, along with their families, are invited to join Chancellor Tom Case and our distinguished keynote speaker, Yoky Matsuoka, recognized with a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and acclaimed as one of "The Brilliant Ten" in Popular Science Magazine. She was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House and the Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award from IEEE.

Yoky Matsuoka is currently vice president of technology for NEST and formerly the head of innovation at Google. She is also president of YokyWorks Foundation that builds devices for people with disabilities and director of a Center Initiative for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering that is energized by over 100 research members and 20 industrial partners. She has also worked in academia, holding endowed chairs in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington and at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Ph.D. at MIT in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) in the fields of artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience in 1998. She received an M.S. from MIT in 1995 and a B.S. from UC Berkeley in 1993, both in EECS. She was also a postdoctoral fellow in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT and in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University. Watch NOVA's video featuring Matsuoka.