Cindy Grimm facts for kids
Cindy Marie Grimm is an American computer scientist, roboticist, and mechanical engineer. She is a professor at Oregon State University. She teaches in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering.
What She Studies
Cindy Grimm studies many interesting things in her research. She looks at how robots can pick up objects, which is called robot grasping. She also thinks about important questions like how to make sure robots are fair and respect people's privacy. This includes thinking about rules for drones that fly by themselves and self-driving cars.
In the past, she has worked on other cool projects. She studied the shape of ferret brains. She also used ideas from how bats "see" with sound (called sonar) to create new sensors for robots. Another project involved using ideas from classic paintings to help people understand medical images better.
She has also done important work on how computers can understand shapes and images. This includes things like splitting images into parts (called volume segmentation) and comparing different shapes. She even worked on how to create and understand human facial expressions using computers.
Her Journey in Science
Cindy Grimm grew up in California. Her parents were teachers who later made educational software.
She went to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated in 1990. She studied two subjects: art and computer science. Later, she earned her Ph.D. (a very high degree) from Brown University in 1996. Her Ph.D. work was about creating computer models of surfaces.
After her Ph.D., she did more research at Brown and at Microsoft Research. In 2000, she became a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She moved to Oregon State University in 2012. She became a full professor there in 2020.
Her Life Outside Work
Cindy Grimm is married to Bill Smart. He is also a professor at Oregon State University in the same department. They met when they were students at Brown University. They were both taking a martial arts class called hapkido.
They still work together in martial arts today. They own a dojo (a martial arts school) in Corvallis, Oregon.
