Rooted in Robotics

Nationally acclaimed scientist, researcher, AI expert Ayanna Howard honored with USPTO trading card

Dr. Ayanna Howard liked dolls and Betty Crocker ovens as a young girl—and also robots and science fiction. Her favorite TV show, “The Bionic Woman,” aired its last episode when she was only 6.
By then, the Donruss Co. had produced 44 trading cards that featured scenes from the show and its star, Lindsay Wagner. Now, Howard has a trading card of her own.

The card, number 32 in the USPTO inventor series launched in 2012, was unveiled at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas—a tribute to her accomplishments as a national leader in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), educator, entrepreneur, and the first woman in her current position as dean of The Ohio State University College of Engineering.

As of mid-2024, Howard’s research had been published in more than 250 peer-reviewed publications, according to Brown University, where she received her B.S. in engineering in 1993. She is a respected speaker on robotics, AI, and the strong need for diversity in researchers.

“One of my inventions is designing robots and embodied AI that can engage children with motor disabilities in therapy and in the home environment,” Howard told the USPTO.

“Our human-robot interactions also inject math and science education, so that as children are doing therapy, they’re also learning. I truly believe that when you are a child with a special need, when you are given the tools to solve your own [problems] and think about the world differently, you are also empowered to create your own inventions.”

A father who majored in engineering and a mother who majored in math were big influences in Howard’s life. She did not notice racial bias until her college years, when it hit hard.

In an interview with Science, she recalled she was told: “The only reason you’re here is because the school needs diversity.” And, “Maybe you should think about applying to graduate school at XYZ University; they are trying to bump up their minority numbers.”

At the reveal of her card, she told the USPTO that “A lot of students and young adults and potential innovators and inventors don’t necessarily see themselves in that way.

“So one of the things that I value, and why I’m so proud of the fact that the U.S. government is doing this, is that they’re saying that innovation comes in all shapes, colors, sizes, and ages, and that’s so important for the American dream, and our value system.”

Summer internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) fortified her confidence and sense of belonging. About two years before she finished her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California in 1999, JPL asked her to mentor K-12 students about NASA and STEM subjects.
“I’d never thought of myself as a mentor,” she said, “but I realized that just as past words had punched holes through my soul, I could patch holes for others through my own words.” Howard strongly believes future workforces should be built on the teaching of computational skills—which lead to AI—from a very early age.

“You think about K through 12. We just assume that you will learn how to read,” she recently told Washington Post Live. “We just assume that you will learn how to do basic math skills and we’ve designed our curriculum from K through 12 so that at the end of high school you are able to read at some grade level; you are able to do some basic math. We need to do the same thing around computational skills.”

Requests for the USPTO trading cards can be sent to education@uspto.gov. You can also see the cards at bit.ly/3XeRVLA.

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