Awards and Recognition

Over the last seven years the work of the Centre and its researchers has attracted significant and sustained recognition, often acknowledged through the receipt of awards, funding grants, fellowships and promotions.

The list is comprehensive:

We’ve had thirteen Best Paper awards including the prestigious Koenderink Paper Prize in 2016, one DECRA Fellowship, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship and seven Future Fellowships. Numerous Centre researchers have been invited to become Fellows of prestigious entities such as the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, the Institute of Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Asian Federation of Computer Vision and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.  Our people have also received one Top Reviewer award, two Best Reviewer awards and three Outstanding Reviewer awards.

International recognition has also come in the form of the Humboldt Research Fellowship, Wharton-QS Stars Reimagine Education Award, the MIT Technology Review Innovator Award, IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation, and the RA McLachlan Award by the Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia. We have also had recipients of the NVIDIA Pioneering Research Award, a Google Faculty Research Award and a Google Impact Challenge People’s Choice Prize.

Closer to home our researchers have received first place in the VQA 2.0 Challenge, the Amazon Robotics Challenge and the Visual Object Tracking Challenge in both 2015 and 2016.  Centre researchers have received the CSIRO Science Excellence Medal, the CSIRO Digital and National Facilities Science Excellence Award, the Batterham Medal from the Academy of Technology and Engineering, an Australian Academy of Science J.G. Russell Award, an Australian Teacher of the Year Award and an Australian Academic of the Year as determined by the Australian Defence Force.

One of our robots has also taken out three awards at the 2019 Good Design Awards and one of our researchers made Robohub’s global list of ‘30 women in robotics you need to know’. We had two researchers named in Australia’s top 40 young researchers, two Young Tall Poppy of the Year recipients, our researchers won the South Australian Science Award for Excellence in Research Collaboration and we had a state finalist for Australian of the Year.

We’ve had two ‘Superstars of STEM’, and one of our team recognised in the Courier Mail’s ‘Power 100 List’ for putting robotics on the map in Australia.  A member of our Centre Advisory Board received the MA Sargent Medal by Engineers Australia Electrical College and another was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Our researchers have won funding grants such as an ARC Leif Grant, an AMP Tomorrow Maker Grant and a Microsoft Grant as part of the Microsoft AI for Earth Program. A number of researchers have been part of successful CRC bids and one of the Centre start-ups won first place in the Unicorn Cup Grand Final – the world’s largest start-up pitch competition.

Our four Australian partner universities have recognised the talent of our people through 26 promotions, a number of awards for Excellence and Outstanding Performance and a Dean’s Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence.