Empowering the next generation of leaders in robotics

Left to right: Haley Mayer, Connor Holmes, Yunqi Huang, Sven Lilge and Adam Heins are four graduate students in the Robotics Leadership Program, pictured here presenting their work on how teachers can integrate robotics into their lesson plans at the 2023 Ontario Association of Mathematics Educators Annual Conference. (Photo: Erica Tiberia)

In 2022, the Robotics Institute launched the Robotics Leadership Program (RLP), the only co-curricular program of its kind in Canada for robotics graduate students.

The program empowers graduate students to navigate and answer big social questions through a combination of equity, diversity and inclusion and values-driven workshops, global skills training, mentorship, hands-on service-learning, and student-led community projects. It aims to help Canada build a network of highly qualified, ethical, and well-rounded roboticists.

In 2024, RLP was recognized by the University of Toronto with an Excellence Through Innovation Award for mentoring and training future robotics leaders.

The Robotics Institute is also home to Canada’s first Collaborative Specialization in Robotics for research stream graduate students, launched in 2022. The program provides a structured community of practice that combines engineering and computer science approaches to robotics and its applications, including healthcare, mobility, logistics and manufacturing. The research thesis and coursework of the participants is complemented with a seminar-style course, events and professional development skills, and provides graduates with a robotics designation on their degree.

To learn more about innovations from the Robotics Institute, watch The Future Is Robotic, an episode of the Groundbreakers video series.