Hallie Siegel served as Robohub's first Managing Editor - from March 2013 to January 2016 - and in that time built an international network of over 150 expert contributors and grew Robohub's readership to 75,000 unique monthly visitors. Through her communication expertise and editorial guidance, she worked directly with hundreds of robotics and AI researchers, startups, and industry members to build a unified community news platform for sharing major developments, contextualizing key issues, and engaging in discussion.
Her two main priorities at Robohub were to: 1) Create a central repository for tracking major events and developments across the breadth of the robotics field (research, business, industry, ethics, policy, government investment, and the arts) that would serve as a tracking resource for the community; and 2) to build a culture of effective science communication in the robotics community, through education and editorial support.
Key contributions toward these goals include launching and co-authoring (Feb 2014 - Nov 2015)
Robohub's monthly digest; moderating the Robotics panel at the
2013 Open Innovations Forum in Moscow, developing curriculum and delivering science communication workshops at
ICRA and the
Skolkovo Robotics Conference, developing more than a dozen focus series on key topics like
standardization in robotics,
autonomous cars,
regulating robotics, and the
Big Deals series, which looks at why major companies like Google, Amazon and Softbank are investing in the field.
In her time at Robohub she interviewed many experts in the field, including
Dmitry Grishin (Grishin Robotics),
Rich Mahoney (SRI),
Toshio Fukuda, and Clearpath's
Ryan Gariepy. She also contributed occasional analysis, editorial and reporting:
Japanese telcos vie for share in consumer robot-as-a-service business
Let’s hope that #IStandWithAhmed will help improve diversity in robotics
Does the Small UAV industry need its own coalition?
Snowden BEAMs into TED: How robotic telepresence disrupts borders
Turning the lens on robotics reporting: An interview with New York Times technology reporter John Markoff
Background
From 2008-2010 Siegel worked at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) with Raffaello D'Andrea's research group. On her return to her native Canada in 2010, she continued to consult with various groups at ETH, including the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the European Control Association, and the Gramazio Kohler Group, for whom she wrote edited and wrote key portions of the successful CHF 13.4 million
NCCR grant for Digital Fabrication.
Siegel is also an artist represented by the Olga Korper Gallery in Toronto, Canada, and has exhibited internationally. Her artwork is primarily motivated by the history of disruptive technologies.
Whether working with others or on her own projects, Siegel is at heart a story teller interested in how technology shapes the human condition.
She remains an editor-at-large, seeking out important stories to tell in the disruptive technologies landscape.