VIJAY KUMAR is the Assistant Director for Robotics and Cyber Physical Systems at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is on sabbatical leave from the University of Pennsylvania where he is the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, with appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, and Computer and Information Science. He received his Bachelors of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1987.

Dr. Kumar is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics and the Springer Tract in Advanced Robotics (STAR).  He is the recipient of the 1991 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator award, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (University of Pennsylvania), the 1997 Freudenstein Award for significant accomplishments in mechanisms and robotics, and the 2012 Distinguished Service Award (IEEE Robotics and Automation Society). He has won best paper awards at DARS 2002, ICRA 2004, ICRA 2011, and RSS 2011 and has advised doctoral students who have won Best Student Paper Awards at ICRA 2008, RSS 2009, and DARS 2010.  He is also a Distinguished Lecturer in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and an elected member of the Robotics and Automation Society Administrative Committee (2007-2012).