As soon as we enter the room professor Manuela Veloso captivates us with her smile. The department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC) invited professor Manuela Veloso to deliver a Distinguished Lecture within the DEEC Talks.

The Head of Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Herbert A. Simon University Professor in the School of Computer Science at CMU, renowned for creating CoBots, came to Técnico to speak of her work. “If you visit me at CMU, you can expect to be met at the reception and led to my office by a robot”, shares the professor. “Some people don’t find this funny”, she jokes.

“There is nothing romantic about my career choice and I never liked science fiction movies . When I was doing my master’s thesis I realised that many of our tasks could be automated and I wanted to experience that”, shared professor Manuela Veloso. She graduated from Técnico in Electrical Engineering and she is passionate about her job.

During her lecture, professor Manuela Veloso spoke about some of her most recent achievements and addressed those that she still intends to achieve. The CMU professor highlighted that the main goal of her research is that robots complement humans.

The researcher demystified all the negative effects associated to AI. “Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool and ends up being an alert for humanity to be more responsible, educated, diverse, inclusive, creative and peaceful”, said professor Manuela Veloso. “If we think that robots can perform the boring jobs, we will stop being so negative every time we speak about this”, she added.