• Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings gave the keynote address at the Center for Talented Youth award ceremony on June 10th. The ceremony honored 7th and 8th grade students who had scored in the top 99.99 percentile on the SAT and ACT. His talk was titled "Learning from Nature to make Robots See and Walk".

• The JHU Community Service Alumni Association Grant was awarded to CISSRS in the amount of $1500.00. This grant will fund the organization and running of the Robotics System Challenge to be held on March 31, 2007. Congratulations!
• CISSRS organized and sponsored the second annual Robotic System Challenge that was held on Saturday, March 31st. Dr. Greg Hager kicked off the event with a welcome in the morning describing robotics and the kinds of research the ERC conducts. Ms. Carol Reiley, CISSRS President, introduced the group to the JHU judges and volunteers and the guest speaker Mr. Daniel Creasy. Mr. Creasy is the Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at JHU and he discussed the importance of doing well in high school, and what steps to take to ensure a successful college experience.
  
  

  Ten high school teams from across the state of MD competed against each other in one of four challenges (described further on our website) with a pre-assembled robot. The registration fee for the teams and the Boe-Bot kits were paid for by a grant from the Alumni Association, which allowed schools to participate that may not have been able to due to school budget restraints.

  The Baltimore Sun published a great article with pictures that truly captured the participant's enthusiasm. Please read the article here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.robots01apr01,1,7879493.story?ctrack=1&cset=true.

  A special thanks to all of the hard work and dedication of the CISSRS officers: Carol Reiley, Ioana Fleming, Tian Xia, Tom Wedlick, Dan Schlattman, Bill Diplas and Jen Hoi; staff, Ms. Laura Libertini who took care of all of the logistics involved; and the judges: Carmen Kut, Ankit Raha, Zach Pezzementi, Ameet Jain, Hassan Rivaz, Gouthami Chintalapani, Paweena U-Thainual, Panadda Marayong, Najee McGreen, Marcin Balicki, Pezhman Foroughi, Mary Wu, and Nicholas Marchuk.

• Prof. Allison Okamura has been appointed the Gilbert Decker Faculty Scholar in the JHU Whiting School of Engineering. This three-year scholarship was established by alumnus Gil Decker, Class of 1958, to support scholarly and teaching activities.
• Ndubuisi Ekekwe has won the UK Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery (CAOS) 2007 fellowship. The award was announced at the recent annual conference of CAOS in England. Besides other benefits, the fellowship offers full funding for 2-4 weeks research in a choice institution/firm with emphasis on computer assisted surgical technologies. It also covers travel to London for the next UK CAOS congress where Ndubuisi will share his fellowship experience. Ndubuisi is advised by Drs. Ralph Etienne-Cummings and Peter Kazanzides.
• Gregory S. Fischer has received the prestigious "Predoctoral Traineeship Award" of the DoD Prostate Cancer Research Program. The amount of the award is $100,000 for over two years. It will support Greg's thesis research on "Robotic Transperineal Prostate Biopsy in Closed MRI Scanner", conducted in conjunction with an NIH-funded Biomedical Research Partnership of the Brigham and Women's Hospital, CISST ERC, and Acoustic Medsystems. Greg Fischer's research and academic advisors are Drs. Gabor Fichtinger and Allison Okamura, respectively.
• Heartlander, a robotic device being developed by Dr. Cam Riviere and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, was featured as the Top Story on NewScientistTech http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19426006.900-creepycrawly-robot-to-mend-a-broken-heart.html
• Dr. Cam Riviere has received a two-year grant from the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery for "Semiautomated Intraocular Laser Surgery using Handheld Instruments.”
• The work of Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings and his research lab was recently featured in an article in the EE Times titled, “Analog chip could be Rx for spinal cord injury.” http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=U4WPZN02QG224QSNDLSCKHA?articleID=201806940
• At ICRA 2007 it was announced that Danica Kragic, a former postdoc in CISST ERC and Gregory Hager's Lab who is now a faculty member at the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, won the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award for her outstanding work in Visually Guided Manipulation.
• Ryan Eustace, a former postdoc in Louis Whitcomb's group who is now a professor at University of Michigan, won the 2006 Transactions on Robotics Best paper Award, as well as the 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
• Emad Boctor, a former Ph.D. student in the CISST ERC, has joined the faculty of the Department of Radiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
• JHU Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student Robert Webster has accepted a tenure-track faculty position at Vanderbilt University, to start in January 2008.
• Several ERC-affiliated students have won prestigious fellowships this year: grad student Amy Blank (NSF), grad student Tom Wedlick (NSF and NDSEG), and undergrad Mary Wu (NSF NDSEG). Undergrad Joe Romano also won an NSF Honorable Mention.
• Greg Fischer won second place for the Student Employee of the Year award. The Johns Hopkins University Student Employment Services states that, “This award program is designed to recognize the outstanding achievements and contributions of students who work part-time while attending full-time classes.”

Robotic System Challenge 2007	Friday Student Seminars	Robotics Summer Camp 2007

2006 Events & Activities