Today, the National Science Foundation is scheduled to announce a partnership between seven research universities and eight historically black colleges to encourage African Americans to pursue research and scholarship in robotics, reports Chronicle of Higher Education's Andrea L. Foster.
Out of about two million computer and information scientists in the United States only 4.8 percent of them are African American, according to the science foundation.
The alliance, called the Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact (ARTSI), will, among other things, offer: research activities at historically black colleges, internships for minority students in university laboratories, national outreach through a Web portal, and an annual student research conference and workshop.
The NSF is providing $2 million over three years to fund alliance activities. The grant's principal investigator is Andrew Williams, an associate professor of computer science at Spelman College who formed the robotics soccer team, SpelBots, which competed at the annual RoboCup competition in July.
David Touretsky, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, will provide professional development for faculty teaching computer science and robotics classes.
Other HBCUs in the alliance are Hampton, Morgan State, Florida A&M, Norfolk State, and Winston-Salem State universities; and the universities of Arkansas-Pine Bluff and the District of Columbia. The research universities involved in the alliance are Carnegie Mellon, Brown, and Duke universities; the universities of Alabama, Pittsburgh, and Washington; and Georgia Institute of Technology.
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