MassRobotics announces the winners of 2026 Robotics Medal and Rising Star awards

MassRobotics announced its 2026 Robotics Medal and Rising Star recipients at the IEEE ICRA conference in Vienna.

The Robotics Medal recognizes the wide-ranging impact of female researchers focusing on the development of robotics around the globe. It goes to a nominated woman in robotics to recognize her impactful contributions to the field. The award includes a $50,000 prize awarded to the individual.

The 4th Annual MassRobotics Robotics Medal award, sponsored by Amazon Robotics, was presented to Dr. Allison Okamura. She is the Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a science fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Okamura earned the award for her foundational research in haptics, medical robotics, and robot design. She was also recognized for her contributions to open access robotics education, mentorship, and promotion of women in robotics.

The Rising Star Medal recognizes up-and-coming women making strides and advancing the field of robotics and includes a $5,000 award. MassRobotics this year awarded Dr. Ayoung Kim, a professor at Seoul National University, its Rising Star in Robotics Medal.

Kim earned the honor through her work in pioneering Scan Context for lidar place recognition and advanced resilient multi-sensor SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) for robust autonomy. Widely used open datasets and tools supported this work.

“We were thrilled by the overwhelming number of outstanding nominations we received this year and were impressed by the diversity of robotic research happening across the globe,” said Joyce Sidopoulos, co-founder and chief of operations at MassRobotics. “This award reflects the contributions women in robotics have made, and inspires the next generation who will make an impact in this expanding field.”

MassRobotics will hold a formal gala awarding the medals and celebrating the recipients at the MIT Samberg Conference Center in Cambridge, Mass., on Nov. 7. Tickets, reserved tables, and sponsorship opportunities for the event are available online.

Women still make up a minority of the STEM workforce

While women comprise 48% of the total workforce, just 35% of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce is made up of women. When it comes to engineering and robotics roles, women only make up 16% of the workforce, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project.

Nominations for the medals came from around the U.S. and across the globe. Submissions spanned a range of robotic technology fields and areas of research. This included anything from new materials for gripping to exoskeletons, assistive technologies, human-robot interaction, and motion planning.

A committee of robotics experts led by MassRobotics selected the winners. The committee convened several times and methodically evaluated the significance, depth, and originality of technical contributions each nominee made in the overall field of robotics.

“Robotics thrives when it embraces diverse perspectives and approaches – and the contributions of leading female researchers have been central to solving some of the field’s most complex and pressing challenges,” said Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT and member of the MassRobotics board. “The Robotics Medal honors the kind of exceptional scientific achievement and technical innovation that moves our entire field forward.”

Past recipients have included women from the University of California – San Diego, the University of Southern California, the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Amazon and MassRobotics invest in women in STEM

To encourage diversity in the field of robotics, Amazon established an endowment with MassRobotics in 2022. The purpose of The Robotics Medal is not just to celebrate individual achievements. It also aims to inspire and encourage women and other underrepresented groups to participate in robotics.

“As the founding sponsor of the Robotics Medal, our mission is to celebrate and honor female robotics professors around the world who have made extraordinary contributions to advancing robotics technology,” said Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics and chairperson of the MassRobotics board. “We are deeply grateful for the work that both Dr. Okamura and Dr. Kim have brought to the physical AI community, and we are proud to recognize and celebrate their remarkable achievements”.

Since 2017, MassRobotics has grown from a Massachusetts-based incubator to a global robotics hub. It has helped support the adoption of robotics worldwide and provided startups with the resources needed to grow and scale. Of the approximately 100 startups that MassRobotics houses at its facility in Boston, more than 50% are from out of state, and 25% are from outside the U.S.

MassRobotics hosts STEM and robotics initiatives that it specifically developed for high school women. The organization continues to promote women in robotics through events and networking.

Over the past six years, the MassRobotics Jumpstart Fellowship program has graduated nearly 120 students who have since enrolled in notable universities. These include MIT, Harvard University, Cornell University, Northeastern University, Boston University, Stanford, Princeton, Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan, Purdue University, and the University of Massachusetts.

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