Antonella Wilby SM'16

 

Antonella Wilby is a robotics engineer, outdoor adventurer and photographer, and a National Geographic Explorer who builds robots to explore extreme environments. She develops cutting-edge robotics and technology to help understand ocean ecosystems, study endangered species, and map unexplored environments, with the ultimate goal of better understanding and protecting our blue planet.  Wilby is currently a PhD student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the Contextual Robotics Institute, UC San Diego, where her current research focuses on the development of autonomous underwater robots and vision-based algorithms for high-resolution mapping and exploration of coral reefs. She holds Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego. She has participated in multiple scientific expeditions on land and at sea, including exploring Greenland and Baffin Island aboard the Heart of the Arctic Explorers Club/Adventure Canada cruise, multiple research cruises in Hawaii and California as an ROV pilot aboard E/V Nautilus, and deploying autonomous underwater camera systems she engineered to help study the critically-endangered vaquita porpoise in Baja California, Mexico.