Women in Robotics: Space & Visionaries
Exploration, inspiration, and seeing beyond the present.
When we think about the future of robotics, we often look to the stars. But visionary work also happens here on Earth by shaping how we imagine and interact with technology.
This October, we’re taking a deeper dive into our 2025 Women in Robotics you need to Know About list, celebrating five honorees each week. This week we’re celebrating leaders who expand our horizons: advancing robotic touch and UAV inspection, exploring outer space, redefining AI, and sharing the story of robotics to the world.
These five honorees remind us that vision is not only about seeing what lies ahead. It’s about inspiring others to believe in what’s possible.
Heba Khamis
Heba Khamis is CEO and co-founder of Contactile, a Sydney start-up designing tactile sensors that give robots a human-like sense of touch. Khamis earned a PhD in engineering and has been developing tactile sensors since 2014.
Contactile’s nine-element sensor enables robots to grip unknown objects securely and safely, allowing them to operate in unstructured environments. The company has been recognised among Australia’s most innovative manufacturers and has collaborated on research with universities.
Kelen Teixeira Vivaldini
Kelen Teixeira Vivaldini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Brazil. She leads research on autonomous robots, intelligent systems, and mission planning for UAVs, with applications in environmental monitoring, aircraft inspection, and precision agriculture.
With over a decade of experience in robotics, embedded systems, and AI applied to autonomy, she integrates modeling, implementation, and validation of robotic systems in her work. Her research advances navigation and planning strategies for ground and aerial robots, contributing to more efficient and reliable autonomous systems.
Vivaldini’s academic trajectory combines research and teaching, fostering innovation and collaboration in robotics while training the next generation of engineers and scientists.
Natalie Panek
Natalie Panek is a mission systems engineer at MDA’s Robotics & Automation division, where she designs locomotion systems and robotic arms for space missions. She helped develop the chassis and mobility system for the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover and works on satellite-servicing robotics.
Panek is a vocal advocate for women in STEM. She founded the Panek Room blog to mentor young people and has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30. Outside engineering she holds a pilot’s licence and hopes to travel to space.
Joelle Pineau
Joelle Pineau is a Canadian AI researcher and professor of computer science at McGill University. She co-directs the Reasoning & Learning Lab and co-founded the SmartWheeler and Nursebot projects to build assistive robots for older adults. A fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, she has championed reproducibility initiatives and served as Meta’s global vice-president of AI research.
After leaving Meta in May 2025, Pineau joined Cohere as the company’s first chief AI officer. In this role she oversees AI strategy across research, product and policy teams. Pineau helped develop Meta’s early Llama models and sees Cohere’s focus on practical enterprise applications as an opportunity to build more secure and private AI systems.
Hallie Siegel
From 2008-2010 Siegel worked at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) with Raffaello D’Andrea’s research group. On her return to her native Canada in 2010, she continued to consult with various groups at ETH, including the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the European Control Association, and the Gramazio Kohler Group, for whom she wrote edited and wrote key portions of the successful CHF 13.4 million NCCR grant for Digital Fabrication.
Hallie Siegel served as Robohub’s first Managing Editor - from March 2013 to January 2016 - and in that time built an international network of over 150 expert contributors and grew Robohub’s readership to 75,000 unique monthly visitors.
Key contributions toward these goals include launching and co-authoring (Feb 2014 - Nov 2015) Robohub’s monthly digest; moderating the Robotics panel at the 2013 Open Innovations Forum in Moscow, developing curriculum and delivering science communication workshops at ICRA and the Skolkovo Robotics Conference, developing more than a dozen focus series on key topics like standardization in robotics, autonomous cars, regulating robotics, and the Big Deals series, which looks at why major companies like Google, Amazon and Softbank are investing in the field.