Julie Shah (''née'' Arnold) is the Department Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and director of the Interactive Robotics Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Early life and education

Shah was born and raised in New Jersey where she attended a small New Jersey charter school with her future husband Neel Shah. She attended

(MIT) for her

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

and PhD.

Career

Upon completing her doctoral degree, Shah was immediately offered an assistant professor position in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). Prior to accepting the role, she was encouraged to spend an academic year away from MIT as a postdoctoral fellow with Boeing Research and Technology in Seattle to develop real-world applications. In her first year as an assistant professor, Shah co-taught a course called Real Time Systems and Software and co-founded the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). By 2014, Shah collaborated with graduate student Been Kim and associate professor of statistics

Cynthia Rudin Cynthia Diane Rudin (born 1976) is an American computer scientist and statistician specializing in machine learning and known for her work in interpretable machine learning. She is the director of the Interpretable Machine Learning Lab at Duke ...

to augment unsupervised machine learning in computers. As a result of her efforts, she was recognized by the MIT Technology Review TR35 list as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. During her time at MIT, Shah continued her research on human-robot collaboration and transition of results to real world applications. As a result, she became a 2016–17 Perrin Moorhead Grayson and Bruns Grayson Fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

. Upon returning to MIT, Shah earned the 2018 Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation from the

IEEE Robotics and Automation Society The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE RAS) is a professional society of the IEEE that supports the development and the exchange of scientific knowledge in the fields of robotics and automation, including applied and theoretical issues. ...

. In 2019, she received tenure from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Engineering as their Boeing Career Development Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 2020 she co-authored ''What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots'' with entrepreneur Laura Major.

References

Notes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shah, Julie Living people American aerospace engineers American women academics American women engineers MIT School of Engineering faculty 21st-century women engineers 1982 births 21st-century American women