Women in Robotics Newsletter: July 2026
Women in Robotics Updates
Save the Date: International Women in Robotics Day
Mark your calendars! International Women in Robotics Day returns on October 7, 2026. This annual celebration recognizes the incredible women shaping robotics around the world and inspires the next generation to see themselves in our field.
As part of the celebration, nominations are now open for our annual Women in Robotics You Need to Know About list. We encourage you to nominate a colleague, mentor, collaborator—or yourself!—to help us showcase the diverse talent, leadership, and innovation driving robotics forward. Nominations are open now on the Women in Robotics website.
Joanne Pransky Celebration of Women in Robotics Scholarship
Applications are now open for the Joanne Pransky Celebration of Women in Robotics Scholarship, which honors Joanne’s legacy by supporting the next generation of women in robotics through their education. This year’s scholarship will award ten $1,000 scholarships, with applications due August 30, 2026. We encourage students interested in robotics to apply and members of our community to help spread the word.
Welcome to Our New Board Member
We’re delighted to welcome Revati Naik to the Women in Robotics Board of Directors.
Revati has been an active leader in our community for several years, helping organize Bay Area events, growing local engagement, and creating opportunities for members to connect and share their work. We’re excited to have her join the board and look forward to the energy, experience, and perspective she’ll bring as we continue expanding Women in Robotics around the world.
Robots and Startups spotlight from Andra Keay and Silicon Valley Robotics
In our annual “Women in Robotics you need to know about” list, which comes out in October for International Women in Robotics Day, we feature a cross section of roles in robotics, including women in entrepreneurial and business leadership roles. Because so much of what I do involves supporting startups and investment into robotics, whether with Silicon Valley Robotics, IEEE Entrepreneurship and RAS or my weekly Robots & Startups newsletter, I’d like to also spotlight some of these great female startup founders and CEOs. If they haven’t made our Women in Robotics annual list yet, I’m sure they will soon. However, my selection here is very US and Silicon Valley centric. Please share with me other women leading robotics companies that I need to know about! andra@womeninrobotics.org
Senior Leaders
Peggy Johnson is the CEO of Agility Robotics and Board Member of BlackRock and Fox. Agility Robotics has raised more than $600 million for a valuation of over $3 billion. Previously, after 25 years at Qualcomm, transitioning from engineering to leadership, Johnson spent 6 years running Business Development at Microsoft and then served as the CEO of Magic Leap, a spatial computing platform.
“I am forever grateful to the two women who inspired me to pursue engineering, which in turn has made me passionate about encouraging young women to pursue STEM careers.”
Up and coming Startup Leaders
Zinny Weli & Celine Wang met seven years ago at Stanford as engineers passionate about helping robots operate in the messy real world and are now the cofounders of RoboDock, a YCombinator 2026 startup. RoboDock is building the automation layer for modern vehicle depots, starting with charging – designed to integrate with the systems fleets already use, not rip and replace them.
Women in Robotics: Conversations
In the latest Women in Robotics conversation, we speak with Alona Pammer, co-founder and CTO of Devanthro, about the future of elderly care robotics. Alona shares how Devanthro is building “Robodies,” humanoid robots combining physical AI and teleoperation to help people age in the comfort of their own home. The conversation explores elder care innovation, human-centered design, humanoid robotics, and Alona’s experience building a deep tech company as a young female CTO.
Chapter Highlights
New York
The New York City Chapter had an amazing event featuring Revise Robotics - a company that refurbishes old laptops. We learned a great deal from Tarini and Anura (founding engineers) and then got to take apart some out keyboards and refurbish our own jewelry.
Bay Area
The Bay Area Chapter hosted “AI & Autonomy: From Research to Robots,” bringing together researchers, engineers, and robotics enthusiasts for an evening of insightful discussions and live demonstrations. Attendees heard from Sanja Damjanovic, who explored how vision-language models(VLMs) are transforming robotics by enabling systems to reason from perception to planning, and Prachi Sethi, who showcased OpenMind’s BrainPack platform through a live demonstration. The event sparked engaging conversations about the future of AI-powered robotics and highlighted the importance of building connections across industry and academia.
