Georgia Institute of Technology

Ayanna Howard's research is centered around the concept of humanized intelligence, the process of embedding human cognitive capability into the control path of autonomous systems. Howard also addresses issues of human-robot interaction, learning, and autonomous control. Projects include scientific rover navigation in glacier environments to assistive robots for the home. To date, her unique accomplishments have been highlighted through a number of awards and articles, including highlights in USA Today, Upscale, and TIME Magazine, as well as being named a MIT Technology Review top young innovator, recognized as NSBE Educator of the Year, and receiving the Georgia-Tech Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award.

From 1993-2005, Howard was at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where she led research efforts on various robotic projects utilizing vision, fuzzy logic, and neural network methodologies. In 2005, she joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, where she is a member of the systems and controls technical interest group and the founder of the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Laboratory. Howard has also served a term as the Associate Director of Research for the Georgia Tech Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and a term as Chair of the multidisciplinary Robotics Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech.