Jessica Burgner-Kahrs is an Associate Professor with the Departments for Mathematical & Computational Sciences, Computer Science, and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, the founding Director of the Continuum Robotics Laboratory, and an Associate Director of the Robotics Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada. She received her Diplom and doctoral degree in computer science from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany in 2006 and 2010 respectively. Afterwards, she was a postdoctoral fellow with Vanderbilt University, USA. Before joining the University of Toronto in 2019, Jessica was Associate Professor at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, where she established the term "Kontinuumsroboter" and was funded by the pestigious Emmy Noether Research Programme of the German Research Foundation.
Honors & Awards
2021 1 of 50 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About,
Women in Robotics & RoboHub
2019 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum
2019 Discovery Accelerator Supplements, Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada
2018 Distinguished Lecturer Surgical Robotics, IEEE
Robotics & Automation Society
2018 IEEE Senior Member
2017 Elected Landmark in the Land of Ideas: Continuum
Robots for Surgery, German Federal Government
2017 Young Elite - Top 40 under 40 Category: Science and
Society, Capital (German business magazine)
2017 Invited Participant German-American Frontiers of
Engineering Symposium, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and National Academy of Sciences, USA
2016 Engineering Science Prize, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy
of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW), Germany
2015 Young Researcher of the Year in Germany
2016 Young Elite - Top 40 under 40 Category: Science and
Society, Capital (German business magazine)
2016 Elected Member of the Junge Akademie, Germany
2015 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, German Research Foundation
& German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
2015 Lower Saxony Science Award, Category II: Young
Researchers, Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower
Saxony, Germany
2015 Young Elite - Top 40 under 40 Category: Science and
Society, Capital (German business magazine)
2013 Emmy Noether Research Programme German Research
Foundation
2012 Research Fellowship, German Academic Exchange Service