maya cakmak
PAUL G. ALLEN SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
I am a Professor at the University of Washington, Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering, where I direct the Human-Centered Robotics Lab. I hold a B.Sc. degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and a M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the Middle East Technical Univesity in Turkey, where I started doing research in Robotics at the Kovan Lab, with my advisor Erol Sahin. I received my Ph.D. in Robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012, after working five years at the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab with my advisor Andrea L. Thomaz. Afterwards, I spent a year as a post-doctoral research fellow at Willow Garage, Inc. working with Leila Takayama. My research interests are in human-robot interaction, end-user programming, and assistive robotics. I aim to develop robots that can be programmed and controlled by a diverse group of users with unique needs and preferences to do useful tasks.
RECENT NEWS
NOV 2024 - Two new papers presented at CoRL 2024.
OCT 2024 - I attended ASSETS 2024.
OCT 2024 - Our paper "AccessTeleopKit: A Toolkit for Creating Accessible Web-Based Interfaces for Tele-Operating an Assistive Robot" (Ranganeni et al.) was presented at UIST 2024.
SEP 2024 - AccessComputing 6 (the fifth extension of the original AccessComputing alliance) has been funded as part of NSF's $48M investment into Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC).
SEP 2024 - I attended TAPIA 2024.
SEP 2024 - I have been promoted to ("Full") Professor, just as my three-year term as the "Dinning Career Development Associate Professor" comes to an end.
AUG 2024 - I gave a keynote talk at RO-MAN 2024 titled "Towards Physically Assistive Robots in the Home".
AUG 2024 - I had the privilege of attending the Paris Olympics to watch the Sports Climbing Boulder & Lead Combined finals š¤©
JUL 2024 - I attended RSS 2024.
MAR 2024 - Our paper "Using 3D Mice to Control Robot Manipulators" (Dhat, Walker, Cakmak) won the Best Short Contribution award at HRI 2024.
MAR 2024 - Our video "Robots for Humanity: In-Home Deployment of Stretch RE2" (Ranganeni et al.) won the Best Video award at HRI 2024. Youtube version posted by Hello Robot, here.
JAN 2024 - I officially started as the new PI of AccessComputing taking over from Prof. Emeritus Richard Ladner.
OCT 2023 - I gave a talk titled "Towards Assistive Care Robots in the Home" at the IROS Workshop on Geriatronics: AI and Robotics for Health & Well-Being in Older Age.
SEP 2023 - I am teaching CSE 390 R Introduction to Research in CSE for undergraduates in Autumn.
AUG 2023 - Amal Nanavati, Vinitha Ranganeni, and I published a literature review on physically assistive robots coming up in Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems.
MAY 2023 - Paper with Vinitha Ranganeni and Noah Ponto on the impact of customization of assistive robot teleoperation interfaces was accepted at RO-MAN 2023.
MAR 2023 - Our paper on assistive feeding for social dining received the HRI 2023 Best Design Paper award.