Diversity and Inclusion

The SRC lab has a commitment to robotics research that improves people’s lives. We cannot achieve that goal without a diverse group of lab members, who bring knowledge from their own life and experiences into their project goals. To create a lab culture where everyone feels welcome, and to combat persistent inequalities in engineering, we actively recruit, mentor, and retain researchers who are underrepresented or come from marginalized backgrounds.

Statistics about diversity are complicated, particularly with small groups such as our lab. To help guide our discussions, we ask our members the following question when they join:

“Do you consider yourself marginalized or underrepresented in STEM? Traditionally, underrepresented researchers are those who identify as Black, Hispanic or Latino/a/e, Native American, or women. However, we encourage you to stand and be counted even if your identity or background does not fit neatly into one of these categories.”

As of 2022, Prof. Sabelhaus has supervised these percentages of students who answered “yes”:

(Note, many of these students were recruited to and mentored in research projects by Prof. Sabelhaus before the SRC Lab began at BU. We’re still a small group for now!)

Some of our group photos over the years are below. We hope you can see yourself as part of our team.