Sethu Vijayakumar

Sethu Vijayakumar is known for the television show Robot Wars, where he appeared as a judge from Season 8-10 along with Professor Noel Sharkey and Lucy Rogers. Vijayakumar is an acclaimed professor of Robotics at the University of Edinburgh. He is also one of the program directors at The Alan Turing Institute, the National Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in the UK. Besides appearing in Robot Wars, the professor is also known for delivering TEDx talks on machine learning and robotics at TEDx Edinburgh 2015 and TEDx Glasgow 2018.

Vijayakumar was schooled at Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, New Delhi, India. After completing school, he pursued a BE in computer science at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli. In 1992, the renowned professor pursued MEng in computer science at Tokyo Institute of Technology and later did a Ph.D .in computer science and engineering at the same institute.

While pursuing PhD, Vijayakumar also served as a research scientist for the Kawato Dynamic Brain Project in ATR. After that, he worked with Professor Shunichi Amari as a post doctoral fellow in the Laboratory for Information Synthesis, RIKEN Brain Science Institute.

Later, he joined the University of Southern California as a presidential postdoctoral fellow. Then worked as a research assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the university.

In 2003, the professor was elevated to the Director of the Institute for Perception, Action, and Behavior at the University of Edinburgh. After that, he was elevated to the position of Co-Director at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics.

Vijayakumar’s achievements are widely recognized for which he has been awarded several times. He bagged a senior research fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering in learning robotics, which had Microsoft Research as its financer. He has other credits like Turing Fellow, which he secured in 2018. He also earned a Fellow of the ELLIS in 2020, when the laboratory began functioning.

He is also active in the public domain since he gives public talks and interviews about science. He bagged the annual Tam Dalyell Prize awarded by the University of Edinburgh for excellence in engaging the public with science in 2015.  He also gave robot presentations during the launch of micro:bit live sessions by BBC and appeared on Stargazing Live along with Dara O Brian in 2017.

In 2013, the roboticist was chosen as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is also one of the founders of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, started in 2015.