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Associate Professor
University of Washington
Maya Cakmak is the Robert E. Dining Career Development Associate Professor at the Paul G.
Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington, where she directs the
Human-Centered Robotics lab. She received her PhD in Robotics from the Georgia Institute of
Technology in 2012, after which she spent a year as a post-doctoral research fellow at Willow
Garage, one of the most influential robotics companies. Her research interests are in human-robot
interaction, end-user programming, and assistive robotics. Her work aims to develop robots that
can be programmed and controlled by a diverse group of users with unique needs and preferences
to do useful tasks. Maya's work has been published at major Robotics and AI conferences and
journals demonstrated live in various venues, and has been featured in numerous media outlets.
She and her students have collaborated with and developed tools for robotics companies like
Savioke, Fetch Robotics, and Hello Robot. She received an NSF CAREER award (2015), a Sloan
Research Fellowship (2018), Early Career Spotlights at R:SS (2018) and IJCAI (2019), and an
CRA-WP Anita Borg Early Career Award (2022).