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About

Sheila Tejada is a pioneering researcher in robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interaction, whose career spans foundational work in autonomous mobile systems, robot soccer competition, and educational robotics. Beginning with her early contributions to the YODA project at USC/ISI in the mid-1990s, Tejada helped develop mobile agents capable of autonomous learning through environmental exploration — a vision that would define much of her subsequent research trajectory. Tejada made significant contributions to integrated robot soccer systems, publishing a series of works from 1998 through 2002 that advanced real-time visual recognition, dynamic navigation, multi-agent collaboration, and reactive decision-making in competitive robotic environments. Her 2003 work on the Virtual Synergy interface demonstrated creative application of human-robot teaming for Urban Search and Rescue scenarios. Perhaps her most impactful contribution came through AI education, where her 2006 editorial on robots in undergraduate AI curricula garnered 49 citations, reflecting widespread influence on how robotics is taught at the university level. Her interdisciplinary work bridging robotics with developmental psychology to study learning in young children further illustrates her broad intellectual reach. Tejada's career reflects a consistent commitment to making robotics more capable, collaborative, and educationally accessible.