Steve Doswell gets to know one of the newest arrivals on the BoD
Hala Elrofai joined the euRobotics Board of Directors this spring after being elected at the General Assembly in Stuttgart. She is well established in the robotics community, in her role as Program Manager Robotics & Mobility at Eindhoven AI Systems Institute, part of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) in the southern Netherlands. Unlike many of her colleagues, though, Hala is first and foremost a mathematician by academic background rather than an engineer. Mathematics could have taken her on another career path, as she was quick to recognise: “I could apply my skills in data modelling and analytics skills in several domains.” So why robotics?
Hala’s answer – “I definitely wanted to work and contribute to technical developments with a more direct social impact.” – became a recurrent theme in our conversation. By way of immediate examples, she referred to autonomous driving, robotics in healthcare, factories and hazardous environments for humans.
Had any figures in her background (family, school, community) influenced her choice of career? It seems not, at least not directly. Hala left her home in Sudan 23 years ago to study in the Netherlands, first for a Master’s (Applied Mathematics, University of Twente) and then for her PhD (Applied Mathematics, VU Amsterdam), and there she has remained: “There were no influencers. It’s really my journey.” On the subject of her chosen academic discipline, Hala is almost zen-like in the way she describes the purity of mathematics: “With mathematics I can work at an abstract level with nothing around me to distract me. It’s about facts.”
This may sound like a good environment for someone who prefers to work in isolation. While periods of solitude may have their attractions for a mathematician, Hala is clearly there to engage with other people. Now in her fourth year at TUE, she has been quietly but steadily building a network in robotics. It’s something she will certainly draw on in her new role on the euRobotics BoD.
“I really appreciate euRobotics,” she told me with an earnest conviction. “You talk to the right people about the real needs and challenges and also the solutions. But I still need to learn about my colleagues on the BoD and how we can achieve our goals and turn our visions for robotics and AI into real-life applications. There are many problems to be solved.”
Hala is keen on public engagement, mentioning events and education activities for school. The Tech United Eindhoven robot soccer team was firmly on Hala’s list as a very successful way of capturing the public’s imagination. What’s important for her is that robotics should go proactively to the people: “We don’t want them to have to come to us but we should approach them. We should be targeting young people. As we have ERF for industry we should have regional events for the public, plus broadcast programmes and social media as well as physical events.”
I wondered if Hala would admit to ever having ‘a typical day’. I imagine that these exist in some professions but probably not in robotics and certainly not, it seems, in Hala’s world. “No. My day is driven by deadlines, opening channels for discussion, putting new ideas on the table, providing links from inside and outside the university. As program manager for robotics I’m helping to build consortia, writing proposals, reviewing other people’s proposals, contributing to events for euRobotics, Adra and HighTech NL (a robotics cluster based in Eindhoven), and making sure the link with TUE is strong and we are well-represented. No days are typical.”
Sounds like a busy and varied life and that’s clearly the way Hala likes it. Is there time for other interests? “I really like cooking, reading, thinking (author’s note: it surely takes a mathematician to list thinking as a hobby!) and putting ideas down on paper. I also like to spend quality time with family and close friends.”
Hala becomes passionate on the topic of teaching. “I’m not doing it any longer but I really loved teaching, especially helping children with maths. I helped many children and I’m happy that they succeeded and made it to university.”
By now it had become apparent that, thinking time aside, Hala gets great satisfaction from getting things done and reaching outcomes. “I really like to see the result of what I’m doing, especially when there’s a social impact. It isn’t always possible to find a solution in a single step but it’s important to make progress and see some improvement.”
Beyond the practicalities of here and now, Hala expresses a sense of responsibility for the future. “We’re now at an interesting time for everybody. The next generation is waiting for us to take the right decisions. Where we spend our time and investment in robotics and AI is now even more important.
“At euRobotics we have the right people and knowledge and as an association, euRobotics is the right place to guide the EU, governments and other decision-makers to take the right decisions. These are big responsibilities. No one person or institution can do that, but euRobotics can connect and unite people so that we follow the right track with this very important technology.”