WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 14, 2020 – Kate Darling, Ph.D., research specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and leading expert in Social Robotics, will serve as a featured keynote speaker at the 2020 Internet2 Global Summit. The talk entitled “The Future of Human-Robot Interaction” will take place from 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Monday, March 30, at the JW Marriott Indianapolis.

From transportation systems, hospitals, and the military, to the robotization of our workplaces and households, robots will increasingly interact with people. Dr. Darling will address what societal opportunities and challenges we face in the future of evolving robots that can make their own decisions and autonomously navigate public spaces.

“Dr. Darling is a preeminent leader in the field of Social Robotics and her talk is a timely and welcomed examination of the technology itself, and what society’s relationship with robots could look like in the future,” said Howard Pfeffer, president and CEO of Internet2.

Dr. Darling’s fascination with the intersection of technology and society has prompted writing and research that anticipates difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers and the wider public will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades.

Her passion for technology and robots has led her to interdisciplinary fields. Darling has a background in law, economics and intellectual property, and has researched economic incentives in copyright and patent systems leading to roles as an intellectual property expert at multiple academic and private institutions. Named one of the “Women in Robotics You Need to Know About” by Robohub, she currently serves as intellectual property policy advisor to the director of the MIT Media Lab. Darling is a former Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society Project, and is also an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and EmergingTechnologies.

Her work has been featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, The Guardian, BBC, NPR, PBS, The Boston Globe, Forbes, CBC, WIRED magazine, Boston Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Die Zeit, The Japan Times, and many more major publications and outlets. She is a contributing writer to Robohub and IEEE Spectrum.

Darling graduated from law school with honors and holds a doctorate of sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and an honorary doctorate of sciences from Middlebury College. In 2017, the American Bar Association honored her legal work with the Mark T. Banner award in Intellectual Property. She was also recognized in 2017 as a “Radar Thinker” by Thinkers50. She is the caretaker for several domestic robots, including her Pleos Yochai, Peter, and Mr. Spaghetti.

The 2020 Internet2 Global Summit meeting will convene research and education technology leaders from March 29-April 1, at the JW Marriott Indianapolis hotel. It will feature keynote addresses, presentations from noted subject-matter experts, and over 100 sessions and meetings focused on advanced networking, cloud integration, InCommon Trusted Access, and integrated solutions to support research, scholarship and creativity across national and global-scale collaborations. More information can be found on the 2020 Global Summit website.

A live netcast will be available at the event page, https://meetings.internet2.edu/2020-global-summit/

About Internet2

Internet2 is a non-profit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 serves 319 U.S. universities, 60 government agencies, 43 regional and state education networks and through them supports more than 100,000 community anchor institutions, close to 1,000 InCommon participants, and 56 leading corporations working with our community, and 70 national research and education network partners that represent more than 100 countries.

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Source: Internet2