Vijay Kumar: John Scott Award for Robotics Advances<\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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On November 20, scientists, academics and members of the Board of Directors of City Trusts gathered at the\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Endowed in 1815 by Scottish chemist John Scott, the John Scott Award honors scientific achievements that contribute to the \u201ccomfort, welfare, and happiness of mankind,\u201d 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 Karik\u00f3 and Drew Weissman of Penn\u2019s Perelman School of Medicine.<\/p>\n
Bernard W. Smalley, president of the Board of Directors of City Trusts, praised Dean Kumar and his fellow awardees for their visionary work: \u201cWe congratulate the 2024 winners on the potential of their research to change the world and improve people\u2019s lives in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Honorable Michael Nutter, W\u201979, the board\u2019s vice president and a former mayor of Philadelphia, emphasized the degree to which the awardees embody Benjamin Franklin\u2019s legacy as an inventor, noting, \u201cHe spurred the advent of electricity and the Industrial Revolution, but it all started with this: harnessing the power of imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsha Lester, the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Chemistry in Penn\u2019s School of Arts & Sciences and secretary of the John Scott award committee, noted the impact that past awardees have had on society. \u201cThe past winners are like a Who\u2019s Who of the prominent scholars in science, medicine, and engineering,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
George Pappas, the UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation in Electrical and Systems Engineering and Penn Engineering\u2019s associate dean for research, introduced Dean Kumar. \u201cParticularly fascinating is his work of understanding how biological organisms like ants work together and then using those principles to develop algorithms for aerial robots,\u201d said Dr. Pappas. \u201cThese robots are now being used in numerous application domains such as agriculture, manufacturing, logistics and many others.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n