MassRobotics, a robotics innovation organization, announced its 2026 Robotics Medal and Rising Star recipients at the recent IEEE ICRA conference in Vienna.
The Robotics Medal is the world’s first major award to recognize the wide-ranging impact of female researchers focusing on the development of robotics around the globe.
The Robotics Medal is awarded to a nominated woman researcher in robotics to recognize her impactful contributions to the field and includes a $50,000 prize awarded to the individual.
The Rising Star Medal recognizes up-and-coming women making strides and advancing the field of robotics and includes a $5,000 award given to the selected individual.
The 4th Annual MassRobotics Robotics Medal award, sponsored by Amazon Robotics, is presented to Dr Allison Okamura, Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Science Fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, for foundational research in haptics, medical robotics, and robot design, contributions to open access robotics education, and mentorship and promotion of women in robotics.
Dr
Ayoung Kim, Professor at Seoul National University, is awarded the MassRobotics Rising Star in Robotics Medal for her work in pioneering Scan Context for LiDAR place recognition and advanced resilient multi-sensor SLAM for robust autonomy, supported by widely used open datasets and tools.
To encourage diversity in the field of robotics, Amazon established an endowment with MassRobotics in 2022 to support these annual awards.
The purpose of The Robotics Medal is to not only celebrate individual achievements, but to inspire and encourage women and other underrepresented groups to participate in shaping the future of the world through 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, helping support the adoption of robotics worldwide and providing startups with the resources needed to grow and scale.
Of the current nearly 100 startups that MassRobotics houses at its facility in Boston, more than 50 percent are from out of state and 25 percent are from outside the US.
MassRobotics hosts STEM and robotics initiatives specifically developed for high school women and continues to promote women in robotics through events and networking to ensure women are recognized and heard.
Over the past six years, the MassRobotics Jumpstart Fellowship program has graduated nearly 120 students who have since enrolled in notable universities including MIT, Harvard, Cornell, Northeastern, Boston University, Stanford, Princeton, Georgia Tech, University of Michigan, Purdue University, and the University of Massachusetts.
Although strides are being made and women comprise 48 percent of the total workforce, just 35 percent of the STEM workforce is made up of women, and only 16 percent are in engineering and robotics roles, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project.
Nominations for these awards came from around the United States and across the globe. Submissions spanned a wide range of robotic technology fields and areas of research, from new materials for gripping, exoskeletons and assistive technologies, human robot interaction, and motion planning.
“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, cofounder 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.”
The Robotics Medal and Rising Star recipients were selected by a committee of robotics experts, led by MassRobotics, which convened several times and methodically evaluated the significance, depth, and originality of technical contributions each nominee has 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 University of California – San Diego, University of Southern California, University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
A formal Gala awarding the medals and celebrating the recipients will be held in Boston at the MIT Samberg Conference Center on November 7, 2026. Tickets, reserved tables, and sponsorship opportunities for the event are available here.
MassRobotics has created an endowment and welcomes contributions to support future cash prizes for The Robotics Medal. Contact award@massrobotics.org to learn about becoming an underwriter of The Robotics Medal. Nominations for the 2027 Robotics Medal and Rising Star are open until December 31th, 2026. More information can be found here.
