Vijay Kumar: John Scott Award for Robotics Advances
On November 20, scientists, academics and members of the Board of Directors of City Trusts gathered at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia to honor the 2024 recipients of the John Scott Award, one of the oldest and most prestigious science awards in the United States.
Among the honorees was Vijay Kumar, a professor and the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, who was recognized alongside robotics pioneers Daniela Rus of MIT and Takeo Kanade of Carnegie Mellon University.
Endowed in 1815 by Scottish chemist John Scott, the John Scott Award honors scientific achievements that contribute to the “comfort, welfare, and happiness of mankind,” in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin. Over the years, this prestigious honor has been given to luminaries like Marie Curie, Guglielmo Marconi, and recent Nobel laureates Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Bernard W. Smalley, president of the Board of Directors of City Trusts, praised Dean Kumar and his fellow awardees for their visionary work: “We congratulate the 2024 winners on the potential of their research to change the world and improve people’s lives in the process.”
The Honorable Michael Nutter, W’79, the board’s vice president and a former mayor of Philadelphia, emphasized the degree to which the awardees embody Benjamin Franklin’s legacy as an inventor, noting, “He spurred the advent of electricity and the Industrial Revolution, but it all started with this: harnessing the power of imagination.”
Marsha Lester, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Chemistry in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and secretary of the John Scott award committee, noted the impact that past awardees have had on society. “The past winners are like a Who’s Who of the prominent scholars in science, medicine, and engineering,” she said.
George Pappas, the UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation in Electrical and Systems Engineering and Penn Engineering’s associate dean for research, introduced Dean Kumar. “Particularly fascinating is his work of understanding how biological organisms like ants work together and then using those principles to develop algorithms for aerial robots,” said Dr. Pappas. “These robots are now being used in numerous application domains such as agriculture, manufacturing, logistics and many others.”