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Ruzena Bajcsy
Noah Berger photo
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Prominent scientist heads
CITRIS
By Sarah Yang
Pioneering researcher Ruzena Bajcsy, the former head of the Directorate
for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National
Science Foundation (NSF) took the helm of the Center
for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society
(CITRIS) last November as the center's new director.
CITRIS joins four UC campuses -- Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and
Santa Cruz -- with private industry to develop innovative technology
that tackles some of society's most pressing problems, such
as health care, air traffic control, disaster preparedness, and
energy efficiency. It is one of four California Institutes for
Science and Innovation established in the last two years by Governor
Gray Davis.
"We're fortunate to be able to attract someone of Ruzena's
expertise," says Dean A. Richard Newton. "You've
got to have someone who has a national reputation as well as management
experience. But the most important thing is that she is absolutely
passionate about what we're going to do at CITRIS."
Bajcsy helped establish NSF's Information Technology Research
program, which funds innovative, high-impact research supporting
infrastructure in information technology.
A top scientist in her own right, Bajcsy has more than 40 years
of research experience, most notably in the fields of robotics,
artificial intelligence, and machine perception. At the University
of Pennsylvania, Bajcsy served as director of the General Robotics
and Active Sensory Perception Laboratory (GRASP), a world-renowned
research lab she founded in 1978. She is a member of both the
National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.
But Bajcsy's extensive professional credentials reveal only
part of her story. Born Jewish in Slovakia at the time when Adolf
Hitler rose to power, Bajcsy and one younger sister were orphaned
as children, and were the sole members of their family to survive
the Nazi invasion. Bajcsy's love of engineering came from
her father, a civil engineer. Her interest in medicine and helping
others came from her mother, a pediatrician. And the drive to
flourish in a field that to this day is underrepresented by women
and minorities came from her entire family.
"I grew up in a family where women were expected to hold
their own," she says. "My mother and my aunt were among
the first female medical doctors in the central Czech area. My
grandfather believed women should be educated."
Bajcsy received her master's and doctoral degrees in electrical
engineering from Slovak Technical University in Bratislava in
1957 and 1967, respectively. In 1972, she earned a second Ph.D.,
this time in computer science, from Stanford University.
Bajcsy emerged from her training determined to make a positive
impact on society. "I'm a scientist, first and above
all, but I am also a scientist with great social consciousness,"
she says. "That is partly why I am so excited about CITRIS.
Its aim is to investigate how this technology I've been developing
all my life is going to benefit society. Otherwise, why are we
designing all these artifacts if they're not going to help
people?"
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