‘How to Get Hired in Philly’s Growing Robotics Scene’

Published by Penn Engineering Today

Authored by Evan Lerner

As part of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s “Future of Work” series, reporter Joseph N. DiStefano visited GRASP Lab spin-off Exyn Technologies and spoke with alumna Nour Hussein, who now works there as a robotics software engineer.

Her interest in robotics started with the comics. “I read a lot of Batman and Iron Man as a kid” in Egypt, said Nour Hussein. “Seeing the high-tech stuff being used by superheroes was fantastic for teenaged me, and I wanted to create technology.”

Hussein eventually came to the engineering school at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia, where four-blade drones called quadcopters zip down the halls of the GRASP aerial robotics lab on 33rd Street.

In 2019, Hussein took her new master’s degree and joined the Autonomy and Mapping team building flying robots for Exyn Technologies, a fast-growing firm on Washington Avenue, within walking distance of her South Philly home.

“My dad often joked that I broke more computers as a kid than he knew what to do with,” said Hussein, now 24. “I wanted to take them apart and put them back together. Now, at Exyn, I am getting good at putting them back together.”

To better understand the role that robotics will play in the local economy and job market, DiStefano also spoke with business leaders, technologists and educators from around the Philadelphia region, including Vijay Kumar, Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering. They discussed the impact of international trade, changing domestic policy and the need for widening the pipeline of students going into STEM fields.

Continue reading “How to get hired in Philly’s growing robotics scene” at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

And see the full article published by Penn Engineering Today