How two UTIAS grads are building community for women in robotics - University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies

Katie Allison (EngSci 2T0+PEY, MIE MASc 2T5) and Mia Thomas (UTIAS MASc 2T5) know that building robots is only part of the equation – building community is just as important.As graduate students in Professor Jonathan Kelly’s (UTIAS) lab, Allison and Thomas spent hours testing robot grippers and running code. And outside the lab, they were building the Ontario chapter of Women in Robotics – a community they co-founded in 2022 to support women, non-binary and gender-diverse voices in the field.Rooted in their personal experiences and driven by a shared passion for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), the chapter aims to be a hub for connection and mentorship.“I grew up around engineers, and my mom worked in administration at IBM in the 1980s and pushed herself beyond her job description to learn programming, which was pretty rare at the time,” says Allison.

For Thomas, the motivation came from her own experiences as an undergraduate engineering student.

“I started to notice some subtle differences in how men and women were perceived in the program,” she says. “That contrast made me more curious about the underlying challenges women in engineering might face and what can be done to change this.”

“We were also inspired by the international Women in Robotics organization, especially the list they created of ‘50 Women in Robotics You Need to Know About,’” says Allison. “It was a much-needed way to highlight role models in the field, and we wanted to bring the same visibility to our local community.”

Since launching the chapter, Allison and Thomas have organized a range of events – from technical panels to socials and skill-building workshops.

One of their first events was a panel about how to choose a graduate research lab, followed by sessions on job hunting in robotics. At the 2025 WISE National Conference, they hosted a Mechatronics 101 workshop designed to make robotics more accessible to non-engineers.