Education

Ph.D., Cognitive Psychology (minor: Robotics), University of South Florida, 1989
MA, Experimental Psychology, University of South Florida, 1982
MA, Theoretical Linguistics, University of South Florida, 1980
BA, Russian Linguistics, University of South Florida, 1978

Employment History

From 1983 to 2000, Dr. Robin Penner contributed to Honeywell International’s R&D activities through innovative approaches to improving the design of the visible functions of automated systems. She was selected as a Honeywell intern at the Systems and Research Center in 1983, then provided full-time contract engineering assistance to several Honeywell research centers for the next three years. From 1987 to 2000, Dr. Penner was employed as a senior research cognitive scientist for Honeywell Technology Center. Dr. Penner was a visiting scientist with the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota during 2000, and is currently the CEO of Iterativity, Inc., a software development company. She is also involved with the Minneapolis public schools as a volunteer coach for elementary school robotics activities and competitions.

Experience

Dr. Penner specializes in the areas of conceptual architectures, semantic modeling, agents for automated design, dynamic ontology creation, semantic cohesion methods for multi-agent systems, the study of the compositional bases of automated reasoning, and model-based software design and usability engineering. At the University of Minnesota, she is currently directing the design and implementation of the Army Federated Laboratories intelligence analysis system, JointAdvisor, which integrates and synthesizes five years of multi-disciplinary basic research.

Dr. Penner recently designed and developed an automated interface solution for Honeywell systems that provides automatic configuration, operation, and management of digital control systems in large buildings, without pre-designed user interfaces. The first prototype of the DIGBE system was successfully demonstrated in 1999; the technology is currently under patent review, and is expected to begin appearing in products in 2001.

At Honeywell, Dr. Penner was responsible for the conceptualization, visualization, and prototype definition for a number of successful products and research prototypes, both for internal Honeywell customers and in support of DARPA and government sponsored research. Her expertise has been applied to domains as diverse as airport process scheduling, industrial control, military search and rescue, building management, space shuttle diagnostics, home automation, medical expert systems, and avionics targeting.

In addition to research activities, Dr. Penner has extensive experience in successful proposal management and preparation, and has led many internally funded and government research and product definition programs to very successful conclusions. She is a skilled mentor, teacher, and team leader, and has extensive program planning and management experience in addition to excellent public speaking and presentation skills. Dr. Penner has received numerous professional awards and has filed several patents. She is a regularly contributing member of IEEE and ACM.

Full CV and references available.