Roboticists, Join us this Friday for an unscheduled seminar, with coffee, tea, cake, and old friends. Vacations and COVID have caused us to reschedule our planned ICRA Madness seminar. However, two former program graduate students are in town, and have generously volunteered to talk about what they're up to now, and to answer any questions you have about life after the Program. Yes, I realize that Jamison technically graduated from Vanderbilt, but he's still one of us. cheers -- Bill *Life Beyond the Robotics ProgramJordan Meader & Jamison HeardAbstract:* Jordan Meader and Jamison Heard will talk about their experiences in the real world, and how what they learnned in the Robotics Program prepared them (or not) for the jobs that they have now. There will be an extended question-and-answer session for this seminar, so come armed with extra questions. *Jordan Bio:* Jordan Meader is the Robotics Solutions Researcher at OMIC R&D. Jordan’s interests lie in robotic manipulation and the development of novel automation technologies in manufacturing. In robotic manipulation, Jordan experiments with new end of arm tools designed to tackle new manufacturing problems whilst removing common failure points in the hardware. In automation, Jordan acts as a consultant providing insight to new processes for large manufacturers and voicing industry needs to integrators. At OMIC, Jordan’s lab is responsible for overseeing all projects involving robotics, automation or that contain a high demand for electronics. Jordan serves as the onsite tech for IT, networking, computer hardware/software, machine troubleshooting/repair, etc. If it runs on electricity, there’s a chance Jordan touched it. *Jamison Bio: *Jamison Heard received his PhD from Vanderbilt University in 2019 with Dr. Julie A. Adams as his PhD advisor. He then started an assistant professor position at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he leads the Adaptive Human-Robot Teaming (AHRT) Lab and is involved in many university wide AI initiatives, such as the NSF-funded National Research Traineeship Human-Aware AI Program. His research delves into intelligent human state modeling, sophisticated data fusion methods, explainable AI systems, generative modeling for domain adaptations, out-of-distribution reinforcement learning, and human-robot teaming.