Panel 1
Research Lead at RAI Institute
David Watkins is a research lead at the RAI Institute focused on the intersection of robotics hardware and software to create state-of-the-art robotics foundation models. Previously, he received his PhD from Columbia University from the Columbia Robotics Lab, advised by Peter Allen. He is also coauthor of the blog, whattotelltherobot.com, with Stefanie Tellex, discussing the intersection of language and robotics.
Root Access
Samarpita is the co-founder and CTO of Root Access, an applied AI company helping hardware companies program and certify mission-critical systems. She was previously a senior hardware engineer with experience designing motherboards, microcontrollers, and embedded systems. She holds seven patents, including for hardware deployed by the DoD and commercial partners. Samarpita earned her dual Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from NYU, where she also served as a Research Engineer in the university’s robotics lab.
Columbia University
Yunzhu Li is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia, he was an Assistant Professor at UIUC, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, and received his PhD from MIT. His research lies at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning, with the goal of enabling robots to perceive, reason about, and interact with the physical world as dexterously and effectively as humans. His work has been recognized with the Best Paper Award at ICRA, the Best Systems Paper Award, and as a Finalist for the Best Paper Award at CoRL. He is also a recipient of the AAAI New Faculty Highlights, the Sony Faculty Innovation Award, the Amazon Research Award, the Adobe Research Fellowship, and the First Place Ernst A. Guillemin Master’s Thesis Award in AI and Decision Making at MIT. His research has been published in top journals and conferences, including Nature and Science, and featured by major media outlets such as CNN, BBC, and The Wall Street Journal.