RAS initiatives

Three special events have been organized by RAS at ICRA'07.

GOLD Lunch

The RAS Technical Activities Board is sponsoring a lunch during ICRA'07 for all Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD), formerly known as "Young Professionals".
This event takes place on Wednesday 11 April, 12:40-14:10, in the Aula Minor at the Angelicum University, the site of the conference. Ken Goldberg, VP for Technical Activities, and the Technical Committee Chairs are working hard to make this a great networking and information event, so that newcomers to ICRA and RAS won't get lost in the crowd. There will be complimentary box lunches for the first 200 GOLDs who arrive, and all others are welcome to participate in the discussion. We will present selected research breakthroughs from the RAS Technical Committees. Stefano Stramigioli, Chair of the ESPB of RAS, will present the new RAS website.

RAS Open Forum

RAS officers will conduct an Open Forum at ICRA'07 where they will discuss with all interested members current and future society activities and policies. This event takes place on Wednesday 11 April, 18:20-19:20, in the Aula Minor at the Angelicum University. This is immediately after the end of conference sessions on that day. If you would like to know more about how the society operates and have ideas about how the society can better serve the members, this is a great opportunity.

BoF Women Lunch

ICRA'07 participants are invited to an informal "Birds of a Feather" lunch, at which researchers will lead a discussion of the status, retention, and recruitment of women in the field of robotics and automation. This event takes place on Thursday 12 April, 12:20-13:50, in the Aula Minor at the Angelicum University, during the session break at noon. The lunch, organized by women roboticists, will provide a valuable opportunity for female researchers to interact and exchange ideas. The organizers are particularly interested in sharing strategies for increasing the number of women in the field, and developing mentoring relationships between younger researchers (including graduate students) and senior researchers. Through these interactions, we also hope to answer some questions about what motivates women in this field. For more details, including contact information of the organizers, please see https://www.nada.kth.se/~danik/woman.html. The event is open to all conference participants. We foresee up to 80-100 attendees, for whom complimentary box lunches will be available. To allow us to estimate attendance, please email Allison Okamura with the subject line "BoF Women Lunch" if you would like to attend.