Fall 2022 Letter from the Director

Our outreach activities have started to grow once again. In August, the Minnesota Robotics Institute wrapped up the first Robotics Summer Camp in three years. Twenty-nine curious and energetic middle-school students participated in three days of workshops and activities organized by an enthusiastic group of volunteers. Thank you to all who contributed to the event: Resha Tejpaul, Travis Henderson, Dario Canelon Suarez, Ben Hamlen, Chelsey Edge, Sadman Sakib Enan, Pranav Julakanti, Bharath Sivaram, Panagiota Kopita, and Chrysa Papadopoulou. Our plans for next year include many more camps for middle schoolers from underrepresented groups, along with an international alliance that will focus on children in refugee camps.

A few weeks ago, we welcomed the third cohort for the MS program in Robotics—33 students, with a few more to join in Spring 2023. The total number of students in our MS program is nearing 80 (one of the largest MS programs in the College of Science and Engineering). Despite the COVID-19 impediments, our retention rate continues to exceed 95%. Students from our program now work or are doing internships in a variety of companies and entities, including HistoSonics, Sentera, Honeywell, Medtronic, Amazon, and Qualcomm, and some are active participants in local robotics start-ups. The largest recruiters of our students are Amazon and HistoSonics. One notable fact about our program is that more than 85% of our students have a cumulative GPA that exceeds 3.5.

Given the strong needs in the community, we also want to emphasize our desire to do more outreach activities. Special emphasis will be placed on underrepresented groups. For example, attracting linguistically and culturally diverse populations will hopefully increase the number of students from these groups joining college programs. We are also thinking of implementation plans for partnering with schools with a large number of students from underrepresented groups to start after-school robotics clubs. If you have suggestions on organizations or groups that may capitalize on the talents of our MnRI scholars, please contact us. Robotics is an area that attracts the attention of both children and parents. Everyone has a relative or a child who has participated in robotics programs and /or competitions. Through the creative processes which are involved in robotics, we believe that we can use robotics to attract students across genders and from various social and ethnic backgrounds to the STEM fields.

Have a great academic year,
Nikos Papanikolopoulos
Minnesota Robotics Institute Director