IHMC

Big news for us to share. After more than 34 years under the leadership of founder Dr. Ken Ford, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition will see a new senior leadership team take the reins. Ford will step into an emeritus role as of January 2025. Under Ford’s leadership, IHMC was built from a small office inside the University of West Florida into an independent research entity with an international reputation for excellence and innovation. Dr. Morley Stone steps into the role of Chief Executive Officer, having previously served as Chief Strategic Partnership Officer. Prior to joining IHMC, Stone served as the Senior Vice President for Research at The Ohio State University. He also served as the Chief Technology Officer for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and was the first Chief Scientist of the Human Performance Wing of AFRL. From 2003 to 2006, he was a program manager in the Defense Sciences Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Also stepping into a new role is Julie Sheppard, who served as our Chief Legal Counsel and Executive Vice President. Sheppard assumes the Of Counsel role, where she will continue to support the Institute in special projects. The new senior leadership team will be rounded out by Cassie Guilliams, who will serve as Chief Operating Officer. Stephanie Tillery Rothfeder will assume the role of General Counsel for IHMC. She has served for six years as Associate General Counsel at the Institute, working directly with Julie Sheppard. Fear not, STEM-Talk fans, Ken will continue to host the podcast that you have come to know and love. The IHMC team is strong and well-positioned for the future thanks in large part to Ken's vision. https://lnkd.in/ecY9uztY

For those attending IEEE RAS HUMANOIDS Conference, be on the lookout for Luigi Penco, Stephen McCrory, and Carlos Mastalli to chat about what's going on at IHMC! Luigi Penco will be sharing some of our recent published work on high-speed humanoid teleoperation with our robot Nadia, which can be read here: https://lnkd.in/gXjug-_x, as well as our approach for teleoperation assistance: https://lnkd.in/gkut49QD. This type of robot control is essential not just for generating training data for developing robot intelligence, but also tackling tasks that the robot has no experience performing. This type of adaptability is critical for developing reliable humanoids for particularly challenging applications like disaster response. Luigi will also be presenting more of our work at the 9th edition of the Can We Build Baymax? workshop https://lnkd.in/gj9eSq4x! While you may think that after 9 editions, the answer is "no", every year is on a different topic, with things getting more exciting as learning becomes more prevalent and commercial companies are taking off! Stephen will share some of his excellent PhD work during the poster session at this workshop, as well. https://lnkd.in/gGNDPQmk

MERPHI has released a new infographic showcasing the evolution of humanoid robots from 1973 to 2024. Download the hi-res version here: https://lnkd.in/eCJz3Kz4 #humanoid #humanoidrobots #humanoidrobot #humanoidtech #humanoids

If you're attending the American Nuclear Society Winter Conference next week, be sure to attend to the Decommissioning Environment Sciences and Remote Technology technical session. Jared Li will be presenting the work we've done at IHMC with Sandia National Laboratories and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on exoskeletons for worker safety as well as our work on teleoperation of #humanoid #robots with #NASA Johnson Space Center. https://lnkd.in/garWQpVk There will also be an excellent panel discussion during the same session where two of our sponsors, Shaun Azimi from #NASA and Jason Wheeler from Sandia National Laboratories will discuss "Innovative Robotics Integration with AR and VR for Digital Twin Applications" https://lnkd.in/gb6TzD8h. We'll likely see a fair bit of the work done at IHMC on display!

If you've visited the IHMC Robotics lab recently, you've probably seen our humanoid, Nadia. This week, the Robotics team shared a peek at some of the work they have been doing with Nadia's behavior architecture. Watch Nadia navigate opening doors autonomously and demonstrating robustness to failed grasps and door opening attempts by automatically retrying and continuing. You'll see her try pull and push doors, four types of opening mechanisms, and even spring-loaded door closers. Stay tuned for more coming soon! https://lnkd.in/eXXqXBg8

STEM-Talk fans rejoice! Our podcast has earned another accolade, winning the bronze award in the third Annual Signal Awards for best General Health and Wellness podcast. Dr. Ken Ford, IHMC’s co-founder and CEO, co-hosts the podcast with colleagues from IHMC, including Drs. Dawn Kernagis, Marcas Bamman, and Tommy Wood. STEM-Talk, with more than 170 episodes, features conversations with some of the most interesting people in science and has been downloaded by more than 4.3 million people across the world since its launch in 2016. The latest episode features Dr. Rudy Tanzi, best known for co-discovering all three familial early onset Alzheimer’s genes — discoveries that have expanded what we know about the disease, how we might counter its effects, and the speed with which drug therapies can be brought to market. https://lnkd.in/ewQkJabb

IHMC's Dr. Marcas Bamman has received a $7.7 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a clinical trial to determine how people age 60 and older attain the health benefits of exercise. “Exercise is a potent treatment with promise to mitigate most aging hallmarks, but there is substantial variability in individual exercise responsiveness,” Bamman says. “This project will help us begin to understand what underlies those differences in responsiveness.” The trial will combine endurance and resistance training in alignment with public health guidelines to better understand variable exercise responsiveness in older adults with the goal of improving each older adult’s capacity to attain the many health benefits of exercise. https://lnkd.in/eJCxkw55

Dr. Anurag Singh has spent his career using research to unlock a better treatment path for the chronic diseases that dominated his early medical practice. “I felt I was blindly treating the symptomology of these chronic diseases (cancer, diabetes), and it gave rise to the question, ‘What if we could intervene earlier?’” Singh says. The journey to answer that question led him to his role as chief medical officer at Timeline Nutrition, a Swiss life-science company focused on improving mitochondrial and cellular health. Singh, who has a medical degree in internal medicine and a Ph.D. in immunology, is our guest for the latest episode of STEM-Talk, available now wherever you listen to podcasts. He is known for his research into the gut metabolite Urolithin A, which has been shown to improve muscle quality, protect immune systems, and optimize mitochondrial efficiency. This compound is produced by gut bacteria from metabolizing ellagitannins and ellagic acid, which are found in foods such as pomegranates, red and black berries, walnuts, pecans — and even Iberian ham. Listen and learn today. https://lnkd.in/eREAuQkA

Not to brag, but for the second year in a row, IHMC finished first in the small business category of the YMCA Corporate Cup Games. #questforthecup

Many thanks to WEAR for sharing Science Saturdays with your viewers! https://lnkd.in/ez6NNztF