CS Colloquium Speaker CS Colloquium Speaker Speaker: R. Iris Bahar, Colorado School of Mines Date: Friday, November 7 Time: 12:10pm EST Location: CS 402 Host: Margaret Martonosi Event page: [ https://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/robots-are-coming-teaching-interdiscipli... | https://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/robots-are-coming-teaching-interdiscipli... ] Title: The Robots Are Coming: Teaching Interdisciplinary and Inclusive Courses to Engineers (and Beyond) Abstract: Art, design, computing, and discipline-specific engineering principles are often taught in a siloed fashion. This approach leaves students with a missed opportunity to work together in interdisciplinary teams and learn valuable skills from one another. This talk will lay out my journey to design and teach more interdisciplinary and inclusive courses, to engineers, computer scientists, and beyond. In one of my courses, The Robots Are Coming! The Robots Are Coming! I illustrate the power of multidisciplinary study and the beauty of collaboration among students. The course had students augment existing artistic robots and design new dynamic interactive creations, allowing them to gain hands-on understanding of fundamental principles in engineering, computing, design, and collaboration and encouraging them to explore issues regarding spirit, technology, ethics, and sustainability along the way. My talk concludes with some thoughts on the future of STEM education and how courses may be made more inclusive, collaborative, and engaging. Bio: R. Iris Bahar received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at the Colorado School of Mines, where she currently serves as their Department Head. Before joining Mines, she was on the faculty at Brown University for 26 years and held dual appointments as Professor of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science. Her research interests focus on energy-efficient and reliable computing, from the system level to device level. Most recently this includes the design of robotics systems. She is the 2019 recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Engineering Achievement Award and the Brown University School of Engineering Award for Excellence in Teaching in Engineering. More recently, she is the recipient of the 2022 University of Illinois ECE Department Distinguished Alumni Award and the 2024 IEEE Field Medal in Undergraduate Teaching. Iris is an IEEE fellow and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.