Sethu Vijayakumar FRSE (born 1970) is Professor of Robotics at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

and a judge on the

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

show '' Robot Wars''. He is the Programme co-Director for

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's National Institute for

Data Science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

and

, with the responsibility for defining and driving the institute's

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and Autonomous Systems agenda. He co-founded the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics in 2015 and was instrumental in bringing the first

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Valkyrie humanoid robot out of the

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, and to

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, where is it a focus of research at the School of Informatics. He was elected as a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

in 2013. Vijayakumar's articles on Incremental Online Learning in high dimensions, Natural Actor-Critic and other robot learning related publications have been cited over 10000 times in academic papers and he is the recipient of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Transactions of Robotics (IEEE-TRO) King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award 2013.

Career

After a PhD in computer science and engineering from the

Tokyo Institute of Technology is a national research university located in Greater Tokyo Area, Japan. Tokyo Tech is the largest institution for higher education in Japan dedicated to science and technology, one of first five Designated National University and selected as ...

, during which he also worked as a research scientist at the Kawato Dynamic Brain Project in ATR, Kyoto, Vijayakumar became a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory for Information Synthesis,

RIKEN Brain Science Institute RIKEN Brain Science Institute (RIKEN-BSI) was established in 1997 as part of RIKEN, focusing on neuroscience research located in Wakō city, Saitama Prefecture in the greater Tokyo area, Japan. In 2018 RIKEN-BSI has been reorganized as RIKEN ...

, Saitama, Japan working with Professor Shun'ichi Amari. He then headed to the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

as a presidential postdoctoral fellow with Professor Stefan Schaal and subsequently became a research assistant professor (2001–2003) in the Department of Computer Science at

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

, Los Angeles. In 2003, he moved to the

, where he went on to become director of the Institute for Perception, Action and Behaviour in the School of Informatics and then Co-Director of Edinburgh Centre for Robotics. In 2007 Vijayakumar was awarded a

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...

Senior Research Fellowship in Learning Robotics, co-funded by

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

. He is a Turing Fellow since 2018 and a Fellow of the European Laboratory on Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) since its inception in 2020.

Public engagement with science

Vijayakumar is an active science communicator, giving public talks and media interviews. In 2015 the University of Edinburgh awarded him its annual

Tam Dalyell Sir Thomas Dalyell, 11th Baronet, , ( ; 9 August 1932 – 26 January 2017), known as Tam Dalyell, was a Scottish Labour Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons from 1962 to 2005. He represented West Lothian from 1962 to 1983 ...

Prize for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science and in 2016 he presented a series of robot demonstrations at the television launch of BBC micro:bit live lessons. He featured in ''

Stargazing Live ''Stargazing Live'' is a British live television programme on astronomy that was broadcast yearly on BBC Two over three nights every winter from 2011 to 2017. The series was primarily presented by scientist Brian Cox and comedian and amateur a ...

'' with Dara O Briain, March 2017. He was a judge on the 2016-2018 revival of the robot combat TV show '' Robot Wars''. Vijayakumar also delivered two

TEDx TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

talks on robotics and machine learning at TEDx Glasgow 2018 and TEDx Edinburgh 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vijayakumar, Sethu 1970 births Living people Academics of the University of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Tokyo Institute of Technology alumni British people of Indian descent