Marita Cheng Speaker Biography
Founder of Robogals, Aipoly, & Aubot, Technology Speaker, and Author
Marita Cheng AM, inducted as the youngest Member of the Order of Australia in 2019, named by Forbes as one of the World’s Top 50 Women In Tech 2018, Forbes 30 Under 30 2016, and 2012 Young Australian of the Year, is a technology entrepreneur and women in technology advocate. Marita Cheng is the founder and CEO of Aubot (formerly called 2Mar Robotics), which makes a telepresence robot, Teleport, for kids with cancer in hospital to attend school, people with a disability to attend work and to monitor and socialize with elderly people. Teleports have been sold to offices, museums, coworking spaces, for kids with cancer in hospitals and for security. As well as telepresence robots, aubot does research and development in robotic arms, virtual reality and autonomous mapping and navigation.
Aubot
Aubot has been recognized on a global scale through the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2016, and through being called “the coolest girl at CES 2014” by VentureBeat magazine. Marita has presented about Teleport at the M.A.P. International CEO Conference in the Philippines in 2016, MIT Technology Review EmTech Singapore in 2015, and the 2014 World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon France.
Aipoly
In 2015, Marita attended Singularity University’s 10-week flagship Graduate Studies Program, held at NASA Ames in Mountain View, funded by a $40,000 scholarship from Google. While there, she cofounded Aipoly. Aipoly’s first application recognizes objects in real time on a smartphone using convolutional neural networks and relays them to people who are visually impaired. Since launching at CES in January 2016, Aipoly is now available in 23 languages and has been downloaded over 500,000 times.
Robogals
Marita was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year for demonstrating vision and leadership well beyond her years as the Founder and Executive Director of Robogals Global. Noticing the low number of girls in her engineering classes at the University of Melbourne, Marita rounded up her fellow engineering peers and they went to schools to teach girls robotics, as a way to encourage girls into engineering. While on academic exchange at Imperial College London, Marita expanded the group to London and through innovation and sheer will, Marita then expanded Robogals throughout Australia, the UK, the USA and Japan. The group runs robotics workshops, career talks and various other community activities to introduce young women to engineering.
Honors
Robogals has now taught 100,000 girls from 11 countries our robotics workshops across 32 chapters. Robogals has been internationally recognized though the Global Engineering Deans Council Diversity in Engineering Award (2014), Grace Hopper Celebration’s Anita Borg Change Agent Award (2011), and the International Youth Foundation’s YouthActionNet Fellowship (2011).
Keynote Speaker
Marita regularly travels around Australia presenting her work including appearing on Q&A on ABC beside two Nobel Laureates and the Chief Scientist of Australia (TV audience 600,000), and alongside Ashton Kutcher at Lenovo’s #TechMyWay (online audience 35,000). As well, she has presented overseas at Foxconn’s H.Spectrum by Yonglin Healthcare Startup Conference in Taiwan (2016), the 37th Kumon Japan Instructors Conference in Japan (2016), the World Engineering Education Forum in Dubai (2014), and the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts’ World Conference in Hong Kong (2014).
Australian Upbringing
Marita was born in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. She grew up in housing commission with her brother and single-parent mother, who worked as a hotel room cleaner. She graduated from high school in 2006 in the top 0.2% of the nation, and that year was awarded Cairns Young Citizen of the Year for her volunteering and extra-curricula efforts, which included winning awards for mathematics, Japanese and piano. Marita speaks English, Cantonese and Japanese.
Education
Marita has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics) / Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Melbourne. She serves on the boards of Robogals Global, the Foundation for Young Australians, and RMIT’s New Enterprise Investment Fund, where she helps decide on startup investments, the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Tech Advisory Board. In her spare time, Marita enjoys reading, traveling and daydreaming.
Marita Cheng Speaking Topics
Robot Queen to Change the World
These are actual headlines from national Australian newspapers. Learn how Marita Cheng went from small town girl living in government housing to conquering the globe as one of Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech in the World, and the second youngest person to become a Member of the Order of Australia. Noticing the limited number of girls in her engineering class, at the age of 19, Marita founded Robogals to inspire girls into robotics, growing the organization into an international movement. She followed that up with artificial intelligence company Aipoly to help the blind identify objects in real time, which resonated with millions of people. And robotics company Aubot, making robots to help people in their everyday lives. Hold on tight as pocket rocket Marita shares how she changed the world. Key Takeaways: • The only failure is failure to try • Do your best at what’s in front of you, and more opportunities will present themselves • Choose yourself
Leading Teams Through Your Computer
As the founding CEO of Robogals, Marita led thousands of volunteers throughout the USA, Australia, UK, Japan and New Zealand, to teach 140,000 girls robotics globally. To achieve this huge feat, Marita needed to manage and inspire teams across the globe to take actions - all through her computer. How do you motivate people when they're far away? How do you create community when your team is isolated from one another? Key Takeaways: • Creating community around a common vision • Giving effective feedback and praise to optimize employee engagement • Frontloading asynchronous communication to set your team up to win
My Bot, Your Bot, Aubot
What do you think of when you think of a robot? R2D2 or C3PO from Star Wars? Sonny from Isaac Asimov and Will Smith’s I, Robot? Or a robot in a factory stamping out panels for your Toyota? In the future, we were promised robots, so where are they all now? Join Forbes 30 Under 30 robotics founder Marita Cheng on a deep dive of robotics. From robots that coexist alongside us in our everyday environments, to the robots we don’t see behind the scenes, making it easier than ever for us to raise our standard of living, and the robots Aubot has made to help people in their daily lives. What’s happening now, where is it taking us going forward, and when will we finally get our own personal butlers, like Rosie from the Jetsons? Key Takeaways: • All the robots helping us today • The big robotics projects: Where the investment and talent are heading • Robot trends of the future
What’s Real with Artificial Intelligence?
What’s happening in the world of artificial intelligence? What are people working on? What results are they seeing? Is it increasing productivity? Across the main industries, let’s look at a snapshot of artificial intelligence to see what’s happening. Marita Cheng, co-founder of artificial intelligence company Aipoly, which won Best of Innovation Awards at CES 2017 and 2018, will take you on this journey through the most exciting artificial intelligence companies and projects happening today. Key Takeaways: • Overview of what’s hot in artificial intelligence • Ideas for artificial intelligence projects you could work on in your business • Examples of companies using AI around the world to transform industries
Robogals: How Artificial Intelligence Won’t Take Your Job, but Teen Girls Might
When Marita first entered her engineering classes, she thought, “where are all the girls?” And so in her second year at university, she decided to do something about it. She founded Robogals to get girls interested in engineering and technology careers and tertiary studies by going to schools with robots and teaching girls how to build and program them. Now, the organization has taught over 100,000 girls in 11 countries. Awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship to study “strategies to get girls interested in engineering”, Marita shares insights from the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, Jamaica, Japan and Australia on getting girls excited about engineering and giving them the tools to take on any challenge. For her work with Robogals, Marita received the Anita Borg Change Agent Award, Global Engineering Deans Council Diversity Award, and was named the Young Australian of the Year. Key Takeaways: • The exciting world of science, technology, engineering, mathematics • From little things, big things grow • Scale your impact with technology
Entrepreneurship: Engineering Something From Nothing
From teaching thousands of girls how to build robots, to helping the blind navigate their daily lives, to building robots to assist people with disabilities, time and time again, Marita Cheng has managed to create projects with a global impact. Learn the methodology which Marita uses to create projects from just an idea to global enterprises impacting millions of people. From using known concepts such as “3 Month Goals” and “Accountability Buddies” to new ideas such as “The Wall of Change”, and the “Uncomfortable Zone” figure out how you too can choose a project and go from zero to “woah, what did I just create?” in a few short months. Key Takeaways: • A framework to get any project (at any stage) off the ground • “Accountability Buddies” and “The Wall of Change” to ensure you achieve your goals • Inspiring examples of the concepts being used to create global movements
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Marita Cheng Speaker Testimonials
Marita as a person is the complete package - young, intelligent, pretty and modest. As a speaker, she is warm, interesting and engaging. She was able to capture her audience's attention by her message of overcoming obstacles, living her dream and working hard to achieve her goals. She is an inspirational lady who has so much potential to grow into an important leadership role in future.
- Commonwealth Bank |
You had the audience totally absorbed as you spoke so eloquently about the challenges you have faced and the leadership you have shown in getting so many volunteers to work for Robogals, not only in Australia but also overseas. We had many favourable comments from the various architects, project managers, quantity surveyors, builders and building surveyors who attended on the night, all saying how inspirational they found your story! A number of our engineers have been re-motivated to offer to talk at schools and mentor younger engineers. Thank you very much for your wonderful talk about Robogals and your own journey to becoming the Young Australian of the Year.
- Umow Lai |
Marita's presentation was fantastic. She is an inspirational, intelligent, highly informed yet humble young woman. So highly deserving of Young Australian of the Year along with her other accolades.
- VISION International |
Marita took on the role of moderator for the artists to audience discussion after each performance of the Android-Theatre show Sayonara at Arts Centre Melbourne. She was very comfortable on stage and in the spotlight and her delightful personality put both the speakers and the audience members immediately at ease. Her passion and knowledge for the topic of robotics shone through and her skill at steering the conversation and engaging the audience was excellent. She understood the breadth of the work and subtly balanced the discussion to encompass a range of areas incorporating humour and philosophy alongside science and performing arts.
- Arts Centre Melbourne |
