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Distinguished Speaker Series: Dr. Magnus Egerstedt
April 2, 2025 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
The Ocean Institute’s Distinguished Speaker Series, presented by the Nicholas Endowment, brings interesting innovations, real-world research, exotic experiences, and delightful discoveries to the surface through powerful presentations from an ocean of experts. Speakers present on a variety of topics ranging from ocean researchers, ocean authors, ocean artists, and ocean athletes.
Light snacks & Refreshments available for purchase at event.
Distinguished Speaker: Dr. Magnus Egerstedt
Robots in the Ocean
Robots have left their traditional habitats in manufacturing plants or warehouses, and they are beginning to show up all around us in our homes, on farms, in hospitals, and even on Mars. One potential application for such robots is to have them perform environmental monitoring tasks that can help inform conservation biologists, climate scientists, and policy makers about what is happening in the natural world around them, including in the ocean. In this talk, we will discuss the state of robotics and AI – what is science fiction and what is science fact – as well as show how one can design effective robots that can successfully inhabit natural ecosystems for long periods of time for the purpose of providing actionable environmental data.
Wednesday, April 2, from 6:00 to 8:00
Doors open at 5:30pm, talk begins at 6:00pm
$10 – General
FREE – Members
FREE – Students (with Valid ID)
About Dr. Egerstedt:
Dr. Magnus Egerstedt is the Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering in the Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, where he is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Prior to joining UCI, Egerstedt was on the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology, serving as the Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. He received the M.S. degree in Engineering Physics and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, the B.A. degree in Philosophy from Stockholm University, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University. Dr. Egerstedt’s research is in robotics, with particular focus on how to coordinate large teams of robots; so-called swarm-robotics. Magnus Egerstedt is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the International Federation of Automatic Control. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science and has received a number of teaching and research awards, including the Alumni of the Year Award from the Royal Institute of Technology.
