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Laura Boccanfuso Social Robots
Background

Laura Boccanfuso attended George Mason University Department of Communication, where she received a bachelor of arts degree. After graduating, she went on to graduate school at Bowling Green State University, where she received her Masters of Science in Computer Science. Later on in life, from 2008 to 2013, she attended the University of South Carolina to get her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering. After receiving her Ph.D., she did a PostDoc program at Yale University in Social Robotics from 2014 to 2017. Laura Boccanfuso has a long track record of industry-specific education, attending four Universities.

Innovation

Laura found a pain point in the education industry: children with autism, ADHD, ADD, and special needs need extra personalized support in the classroom. Given her extensive computer science, robotics, and engineering education, she found a solution by utilizing her knowledge. Laura had to apply to get grant money to produce a prototype and have the funds to build a prototype. She needed software developers and components. Luckily she received money from the USC research authority, NIH, and Techstars Accelerator in Austin, Texas she could produce the prototypes for ABII. Additionally, When founding her company, she had significant obstacles with finding venture capital funding because her husband wasn't part of the business. There is prevalent sexism in the business industry, and this was a prime example of it. Even though Laura had a great solution and four degrees full of knowledge to create, she was seen as incapable of running a business. In addition to that, she found it difficult to. Despite all odds, she secured human resources and funding in order to create her innovation.

Van Robotics

Laura Boccanfuso is now the CEO and Founder of Van Robotics which developed AI-powered to accelerate adolescent learning through personalized interactions. Van Robotics' first product, ABii, is a smart robot tutor that provides individual unique math and reading tutoring to students in grades K through 5. ABii adapts and learns from the student's performance and pace, so each session is tailored to the specific student being taught. ABii provides step-by-step instructions when students are not able to answer correctly on their own.

ABii Today

Today ABii has been implemented in schools and homes in 38 states in the US and seven countries, benefiting 100,000 students using its technology. This technology is the result of many experts in many fields, such as robotics, software engineering, psychology, education, and engineering, to fix a large pain point for students with special needs to not have the privilege of one on one schooling. There are a select few students with learning disabilities that get the proper attention needed for them to succeed. Therefore students are left behind and perform poorly to no fault of their own. With Laura's technology, schools can give students that attention without paying as many extra teachers' salaries as many public schools don't have the budget to start with. Laura has solved a fundamental problem within the educational system around the world using AI technology.