Born on 28 May 1933 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, Ruzena Bajcsy is a computer scientist specializing in robotics and artificial intelligence. Orphaned during World War II when her Jewish parents were killed by the Nazis, Bajcsy, along with her younger sister, was placed under the care of the Red Cross. Bajcsy nevertheless excelled academically and went on to study electrical engineering at Slovak Technical University, earning her MS in 1957 and PhD in 1967. That same year Bajcsy was offered the opportunity to go to the US to study computer science at Stanford University, where she earned a second PhD in 1972. For the next 30 years, Bajcsy worked at the University of Pennsylvania as professor and chair of computer science and engineering. Bajcsy pursued many areas of research including medical imaging, by developing a digital anatomy atlas and matching it with CT, MRI, and PET images. In 1979 she founded and became director of the General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception Laboratory. Bajcsy pioneered the idea of active perception, replacing the static cameras and sensors of the 1980s with moving ones that allowed robots to gather much more information. From 1999 to 2001, Bajcsy served as assistant director of NSF’s computer and information science and engineering directorate. She then joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, serving as professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences. At UC Berkeley she founded and served as director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, created to facilitate interdisciplinary work among UC faculty and public and private partners. Over her career Bajcsy has received numerous awards, including the 2001 ACM–AAAI Allen Newell Award, the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and the 2013 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award. (Photo credit: Peg Skorpinski)
