Daniela Rus
MIT Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and director of MIT CSAIL
The director of MIT CSAIL, a roboticist who works on soft and bio-inspired robots and co-founded Liquid AI.
Biography
Daniela Rus is a Romanian-American computer scientist, the MIT Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Born in Romania, she earned a BS in computer science and mathematics from the University of Iowa in 1985 and an MS in 1990 and PhD in 1993 from Cornell, advised by John Hopcroft. She started at Dartmouth College and joined MIT in 2004.
She is known for work in robotics and AI including distributed and networked robotics, self-reconfiguring and soft bio-inspired robots, human-robot interaction and adaptive machine learning, and she describes the direction as Physical AI, in a 2024 TED talk. She is a principal investigator and founding scientific team member of Project CETI, which uses machine learning and robotics to study whale communication, and a co-founder of Liquid AI, an MIT CSAIL spinout building efficient liquid foundation models. Her honors include the MacArthur Fellowship and the IEEE Edison Medal, and she has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. TIME named her one of its 100 most influential people in AI.
Notable contributions
Directs MIT's CSAIL
Serves as director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Co-founded Liquid AI
Co-founded Liquid AI with Ramin Hasani, Mathias Lechner and Alexander Amini, an MIT CSAIL spinout developing efficient general-purpose AI systems and liquid foundation models.
Helped found Project CETI
Served as a principal investigator and member of the founding scientific team of Project CETI, the Cetacean Translation Initiative, using machine learning and robotics to study whale communication.
