Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: Yoky Matsuoka -- Leading Researcher in Neurobotics

--One of the nation's preeminent scientists in neurobotics -- an emerging field that merges neuroscience with robotics

--Her work could one day allow artificial limbs to be controlled directly through patients'  brain signals

Growing up in Japan, Yoky Matsuoka, driven and highly competitive, was on her way to becoming a world-class tennis player, even having made the qualifying rounds for Wimbleton. However, when injuries ended her tennis dreams, she turned to another early interest: robotics. Twenty years later Matsuoka is now a leader in the emerging field of neurobotics, hard at work creating robot technology that can help disabled persons. For instance, working at the University of Washington (where her lab -- full of mechanical hands, fingers and arm parts -- looks like a repair shop for the Terminator), she is developing technology that could one day allow patients to control prosthetic limbs through the same brain signals we use to move our arms and legs.

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