Ayanna Howard

Ayanna Howard is the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and served as Chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned a B.S. in Engineering from Brown University in 1993, an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and an M.B.A. from the Claremont Graduate University Drucker School of Management. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2005 as an associate professor, Howard worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1993 to 2005, advancing from robotics researcher to senior researcher and deputy manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist. At Georgia Tech, she founded and directed the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Lab, served as associate director of research for the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, chaired the multidisciplinary Robotics Ph.D. program, and led a $3M traineeship in healthcare robotics along with an NSF undergraduate summer research program in robotics. In 2013, she co-founded Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech spin-off company where she serves as Chief Technology Officer, developing mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs based on her research.

Howard's research specializations in computer science and engineering include human-robot interaction, machine learning, artificial intelligence, assistive technologies, trust and ethics in robotics, and field robotics. Her work addresses intelligent agents interacting with humans, with applications in home assistive robots, therapy gaming for children with cerebral palsy and autism, and remote exploration in extreme environments. She has authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications, including key papers such as 'Overtrust in the Robotic Age: A Contemporary Ethical Challenge' in Communications of the ACM (2018), 'The Ugly Truth About Ourselves and Our Robot Creations: The Problem of Bias and Social Inequity' in Science and Engineering Ethics (2018), and 'Hacking the Human Bias in Robotics' in ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (2018). She is the author of the book Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine. Howard has received major awards including the IEEE Early Career Award in Robotics and Automation (2005), NAE Gilbreth Lectureship (2010), Anita Borg Institute A. Richard Newton Educator ABIE Award (2014), Computing Research Association A. Nico Habermann Award (2016), and Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award (2018). Her contributions have been recognized in TIME Magazine, Forbes' Top 50 U.S. Women in Tech, and as one of the 23 most powerful women engineers by Business Insider, influencing advancements in socially assistive robotics and broadening participation in computing.