Friday, March 20, 2026
ECE PhD student Soomin Shin has been awarded a $15,000 scholarship from the Waterloo Data and AI Institute, recognizing her innovative research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and real-world physical systems.
Supervised by Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, Shin is a member of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab (SIRRL), where researchers explore how robots can interact with people in meaningful, socially aware ways. Her work focuses on building scalable social robot systems that can operate sustainably in real-world environments by integrating advanced AI capabilities.