Danica Kragic Jensfelt is one of Sweden’s most powerful women in industry
When Swedish magazine ”Veckans affärer” presented their list of the most powerful women in industry, Danica Kragic Jensfelt, Professor of robotics, was named this year’s tech profile.
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Congratulations! How does it feel to receive this recognition?
First and foremost I feel extremely honored to be in the same context as these amazing women that I look up to. To acknowledge academia also shows that we are visible and have the possibility to affect all of society with what we do. But are we daring enough? The recognition is powerful and it gives me strength to carry on doing what I do in academia – in my own way. I want to inspire and encourage all interested in integrating technology with other areas, such as health, fashion and art, to join and educated themselves so that they can contribute to and build the future society.
What are you working on at the moment?
At the moment we are developing technologies for future industry. It involves everything from automation to systems that can learn from humans in a natural way and that can be used to improve and enhance the human abilities in certain situations. I also spend a lot of time on the WASP-AI/MXL initiative and all news recruitment that comes with it.
As tech profile of the year, what opportunities and challenges do you see for the tech world during the coming years?
It will be important to find people with the right competence. There will be a demand for technical competence, the ability to apply knowledge to different areas and to work interdisciplinary. Our programmes may not fully keep up with the development and that can become a challenge
for us in academia. But I see great opportunities: technology solving societal issues, that allows us to focus on cooperating with each other and that makes it possible for us to choose jobs that are creative and developing.
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About WASP
Wallenberg Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) is Sweden's largest individual research program and is financed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation. Its current focus is artificial intelligence and the event series AI4X where companies, universities and the public sector come together to talk about the future of AI in Sweden.
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