As Prism's commendation states, "The robotics expert developed and early interest in the field during a summer internship at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where for a dozen years she led research teams assessing terrain for the Mars rover before joining academia."

Dr. Ayanna Howard received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, her M.S.E.E. from the University of Southern California, and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles in 1999. She joined the faculty in the College fo Engineering's School of Electrial and Computer Engineering in 2005. She is also a member of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech and currently serves as the robotics Ph.D. program coordinator.

Her area of research is centered around the concept of humanized intelligence, the process of embedding human cognitive capability into the control path of autonomous systems.

About Prism

Prism is the flagship publication of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), a nonprofit association of more than 12,000 engineering faculty members, U.S. colleges of engineering and engineering technology, corporations, and other organizations dedicated to promoting excellence in engineering and engineering technology education.