Organizers
Brett Hamlin (Teaching Professor, Engineering Fundamentals) : Dr Brett is an enthusiastic faculty member dedicated to first year students and helping them make connections throughout their greater college experience. His vision is to have annual themes that are not only relevant to students but also meaningful to society as a whole. By applying themes across the first year, students are able to see the overt connections that lead to covert learning. Robot101 is a great start to our first year theming challenge.
Charles Wallace (Associate Professor of Computer Science; Associate Dean for Curriculum & Instruction, College of Computing) : Prof. Wallace has always been intrigued by how literature and art can enlighten us about how to live with technology and with one another. He has had the privilege to perform in a number of Tech Theatre Company productions over the years. He has been a fan of R.U.R. for some time, and he was disappointed that pandemic-related restrictions would make it hard to celebrate the centennial in 2021. Then one day in January 2022, while snowblowing — which is when he gets all his good ideas — he realized that ROBOT101 sounded pretty good! Hence our celebration of the 101st anniversary.
Steven Walton (Associate Professor of History) : Prof. Walton is a historian of technology in the department of Social Sciences. His interest in robots derived, other than obvious childhood fascination, from his Master’s thesis on “Engineering the Body: Mechanical Men and Animals and the Mechanistic Philosophy, 1500-1800.” He is currently working on an article about the reception of R.U.R. in the British and American world in the 1920s.
Participants and collaborators
Dustin Abnet (Cal State Fullerton)
Holly Adams (Visual & Performing Arts, Michigan Tech)
Hongyu An (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Michigan Tech)
Jason Archer (Humanities, Michigan Tech)
Jung Yun Bae (Mechanical Engineering / Applied Computing, Michigan Tech)
Jeremy Bos (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Michigan Tech)
Stephanie Carpenter (Humanities, Michigan Tech)
Tan Chen (Electrical & Computer Engineering, Michigan Tech)
Kent Cyr (Visual & Performing Arts, Michigan Tech)
Andy Fiss (Humanities, Michigan Tech)
Laura Kasson Fiss (Humanities/Pavlis Honors College, Michigan Tech)
Dan Fuhrmann (Applied Computing, Michigan Tech)
Tim Havens (Institute for Computing and Cybersystems / Computer Science, Michigan Tech)
Nick Johnson
Heather Love (University of Waterloo)
Chris Murray (University of Dundee)
Vinh Nguyen (Mechanical Engineering, Michigan Tech)
Christopher Plummer (Visual & Performing Arts, Michigan Tech)
Nathir Rawashdeh (Applied Computing, Michigan Tech)
Robotic Systems Enterprise
Ashraf Saleem (Applied Computing, Michigan Tech)
Christopher Schmidt
Erin Smith (Humanities, Michigan Tech)
Amanda Stump (Institute for Computing and Cybersystems, Michigan Tech)
Jindrich Toman (University of Michigan)
Leo Ureel (Computer Science, Michigan Tech)
Dana van Kooy (Humanities, Michigan Tech)
Paul van Susante (Mechanical Engineering, Michigan Tech)
Alexander Weinstein (Siena Heights University)
Financial supporters
Institute for Computing and Cybersystems
Institute for Policy, Ethics, and Culture
College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science
Department of Cognitive & Learning Sciences
Department of Computer Science
Department of Visual and Performing Arts
This program is partially funded/sponsored by the Visiting Professor Program, which is funded by a grant to the Office of the Provost from the State of Michigan’s King-Chavez-Parks Initiative.