Margarita Chli, 37, is professor and head of the Vision for Robotics Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. Geri_born
Margarita Chli is one of the few women who have succeeded in the field of robotics in Switzerland. She advocates for more role models teaching the subject and she also wants to show how robots can be beneficial for humans.
This content was published on November 1, 2021 – 09:00
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Margarita Chli’s family inspired her to pursue a degree in computer engineering, but it was during her PhD in the UK that she became interested in robotic vision, which allows robots to “see” the world around them and process visual data through sensors, software and cameras. She now heads the Vision for Robotics Lab at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich.
The 37-year-old professor has not only found the ideal conditions for robotics research and innovation in Switzerland – thanks to generous funding and numerous experts – but also a second home, where the green hills and the lakes and rivers that fill up with bathers in summer remind her of her home island, Cyprus.
Chli is determined to get more women into robotics, a field which she believes will improve the quality of human life, be it through mobile robots in search and rescue missions or in personalised healthcare. SWI swissinfo.ch asked her about the challenges of studying and working in robotics and how researchers – women and men alike – could pave the way in Switzerland.
Women in science
Switzerland has less female researchers than other European countries. The proportion of female professors stands at 23% and is even lower in natural and technical sciences.
The Covid-19 pandemic seems to have further limited the scientific work of women: Swiss researchers recently analysedExternal link thousands of studies published between January 1, 2018 and May 31, 2021 and noticed that during the first wave of the pandemic women were listed less often as leading authors than in previous years. According to the authors of this research, one possible explanation was that female researchers struggled to reconcile work and family during the lockdowns and therefore published less articles than their male counterparts.
What can be done to reduce the gender gap and make science more inclusive? In its new series “Women in Science”, SWI swissinfo.ch is portraying successful female scientists, to inspire and encourage other women to enter the field.
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SWI swissinfo.ch: Do you see more female students in robotics classes than you did a decade ago?
Margarita Chli: Unfortunately not. It’s a sad story. When I first came to Switzerland, there were maybe two girls out of a total of fifty students. It’s been ten years since my PhD and I can’t say I’ve seen much change in the female presence in classrooms. Perhaps this has to do with my path and the move from the UK to Switzerland. …….
Source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-i-try-to-show-the-other-side-of-robotics–the-good-side-/47068684