Daniela Rus elected to the White House science council

Daniela Rus, the head of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has been chosen in the White House Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The role of the advisor involves giving advice on security and economy issues such as recommending certain policies in science and technology, data privacy and STEM education and to support research and development in the US. Previous individuals that worked in the council were MIT president Charles Vest, Ernest Moniz, professors of physics and US Secretary of Energy, and Eric Lander, director of MIT and Harvard.

The council has been established in 1933 since Franklin Roosevelt’s Science Advisory Board and functions under the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Daniela Rus said:

I’m grateful to be able to add my perspective as a computer scientist to this group at a time when so many issues involving AI and other aspects of computing raise important scientific and policy questions for the nation and the world.

Daniela Rus was born in Romania and emigrated to the US with her family. She then studied IT and mathematics at the Iowa University and then did a PhD in IT at Cornell University. In 2002 she won a MacArthur scholarship and she has become famous for her research in the robotics field. She has won the Science Foundation Career National Award and she is part of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.