June 28,2007 - Yesterday afternoon CSAIL had a chance to honor its outgoing Director, Rod Brooks at an ice cream social. The social featured a video of Brook's accomplishments, which ranged from professorships, authorships, new innovations in robotics, and one staring role in a movie.
Brooks took the opportunity to not only thank the students, faculty and staff, but also to impart a few words of wisdom. He encouraged the students in attendance to solve big problems, to do the opposite of what everyone is doing, and to go forward with a little bit of arrogance befitting their honor of being MIT students.
Brooks will be stepping down at Director of the lab on July 1st, but he won't be going far. He is going back to conducting research full time here at the Stata Center, in the Nose.
Victor Zue will be taking over as Director of the lab effective July 1st. He previously served as co-director of CSAIL since it was formed in a merger between the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Laboratory for Computer Science in 2003.
-Karla Mansur
Related Links:
- Brooks Steps Down as CSAIL Head, Dives Back into Science
Xconomy, June 27, 2007 - Victor Zue will direct CSAIL
MIT News Office, February 14 2007