Ruzena Bajcsy

NEC Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Ruzena Bajcsy was the founding director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) in 2001, a multi-campus organization comprising UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Merced. As part of her activities in CITRIS, and together with the University of California Center for the Humanities, she played a founding role in establishing a program of Digital Humanities. Before joining UC Berkeley, she headed the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation (1999–2001).

From 1972 to 2001 she was a professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where in 1978 she established the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing, and Perception (GRASP) Lab. Throughout her 28 years at Penn, she worked on robotics research, including computer vision, tactile perception, and the problem of system identification. She also worked on medical imaging, and developed with her students a digital anatomy atlas coupled with elastic matching algorithms that made it possible to automatically identify anatomic structures of the brain, first in X-ray tomography and later with MRI and positron image tomography. Use of this technology is now standard in medical practice.

Dr. Bajcsy’s current research is in the use of robotic technology, namely measuring and extracting noninvasively kinematic and dynamic parameters of individuals in order to assess their physical movement capabilities or limitations. If there are limitations, her students have designed assistive devices that can compensate for the lack of kinematic agility and/or physical strength.