UWF and IHMC partner to launch new robotics research doctorate program | Pensacola News Journal

Jim Little, Reporter at Pensacola News Journal inform, Graduate students looking to go into robotics research will soon be able to add the University of West Florida to their list of potential schools, thanks to a new partnership with the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.

A robot at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Photo: Courtesy of the University of West Florida

UWF announced this morning it was partnering with IHMC to develop a doctoral program in intelligent systems and robotics after the Florida Board of Governors approved the creation of the program at its meeting Thursday.

The program will be the first robotics doctorate program offered at any university in Florida, and nationwide, the program is only offered at universities like Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Georgia Institute of Technology...

The field of robotics is a growing one and has drawn the interest of students at UWF, with 66 percent of 149 engineering and computer science students responding to a survey that they would be interested in the program.

"The national demand for experts in intelligent systems and robotics is large, yet universities and technology firms such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon struggle to find people with the expertise and skills their organizations need," said Mohamed Khabou, interim program director, in a press release...

The program will be modeled after doctorate programs in Europe, where the work will be tailored to the student and the researcher with whom the student will be working at IHMC.

"We call it the European model because it's much more similar to the kinds of doctorates you see at Oxford and Cambridge than it is to, I guess, what you'd call the typical U.S. doctorate," Saunders said. "That adds a dimension that we think is on the front end, and will serve as a model for others to come in the state."  
Read more...

Source: Pensacola News Journal