School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
July/August 2022

Funding innovation

A new initiative is underway to accelerate the SEAS engine of innovation, bolstering the process that gets impactful faculty discoveries to market. Thanks to a generous gift from Yale alumnus Will Roberts ’90, the Roberts Innovation Fund will provide grant funding, mentoring, and business training to assist in the commercialization of breakthrough inventions that solve real-world problems. The fund’s focus will include technologies that show promise towards having an impact within the domains of artificial intelligence, blockchain, trustworthy computing, computational modeling, and more.

Helping robots work in groups

For her work on analyzing human-robot interactions, Marynel Vázquez has won a 2022 Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation, a prestigious honor for young faculty members. Vázquez, assistant professor of computer science, will use the $600,000, five-year grant to develop methods for studying and advancing interactions between robots and humans in group settings. The long-term goal is to enhance human-robot interaction so that robots can better take part in social encounters with multiple users. This has become increasingly important as robots are now being used to provide information (in public kiosks, for example, or museums), and are working with multiple people at once, such as in elderly care centers or grocery stores.

New degree combines medicine and engineering

The Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science have launched a master’s program that melds personalized patient care with engineering. The new master of science in personalized medicine and applied engineering will train the next generation of engineers, computer scientists, and medical professionals alike in using new technologies in three-dimensional medicine and imaging, with the goal of improving patient outcomes. The one-year advanced degree program, which is the first of its kind, will begin this summer. As part of the course, students will shadow clinical mentors from various departments and be trained to identify needs for either new devices or improvements on existing resources.