Roopika Ravikanna was one of the very first students to join AgriFoRwArdS, and she has now reached the next milestone in her PhD journey, having just submitted her PhD thesis!

As part of our celebration of the fabulous women in our community, we asked Roopika to tell us all about her inspiring PhD research, which she does in the below video. Roopika’s research focuses on how human-robot collaboration can improve labour shortages, increase productivity, and create more sustainable agricultural practices. Roopika used field observation data, and behavioural modelling, to make robotic systems more efficient and helpful to humans.

Thank you to Primary Supervisor Prof Marc Hanheide and Industrial Partner Saga Robotics for bringing their expertise to this project, and thank you to Roopika for sharing her inspiration and drive for this research.

Roopika also wanted to share with us some of her experiences as a woman working in the sciences, hoping to inspire other women to make the leap into what can be such rewarding and interesting subjects.

Roopika has also been involved in celebrating previous International Women’s Days, most notably when she joined with fellow Cohort 1 student Karoline Heiwolt to discuss their thought on women within STEM subjects. You can read the full discussion here – https://agriforwards-cdt.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2021/03/08/international-womens-day-celebrating-women-in-agriforwards/.