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Devin Balkcom, assistant professor of computer science, was recently honored
with a Career Award from the National Science
Foundation (NSF). The award recognizes and supports the activities of
teacher/scholars early in their careers, and recipients are often considered
emerging leaders in their respective fields. Recipients are selected for career
development plans that integrate research and teaching.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Devin Balkcom in his Sudikoff robotics
laboratory. Balkcom recently received a National Science Foundation Career
Award, which will support his work building robots that can navigate between
locations and assemble products in factories. (Photo by Kawakahi Kaeo Amina
'09)
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Balkcom is interested in building machines that sense, reason about, and act
on the physical world. His Career Award will support research into algorithms
that will allow robots to navigate efficiently from one location to another,
reliably assemble products in automatic factories, and even fold origami.
"One of the primary challenges is to achieve complex tasks with limited
sensing and only a few motors," says Balkcom. The origami-folding robot,
for example, only has four motors, and can't see the paper-it might be compared
to a blindfolded person folding origami with a single finger. In automated
manufacturing, every sensor or motor adds costs and complexity."
Balkcom's NSF award will also support the development of undergraduate
curriculum in robots and geometric-reasoning algorithms, and a summer robotics
camp for K-12 students.
Other Dartmouth professors who have been recently honored with NSF Career
Awards include Sean Smith, Christopher Bailey-Kellogg, and Amit Chakrabarti in
the computer science department; Barrett Rogers, Robert Caldwell, and Brian
Chaboyer in physics and
astronomy; Robert Grubbs in chemistry; David Peterson in the linguistics and cognitive science
program; and Arjun Heimsath in Earth sciences.
By SUSAN KNAPP
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