Spoke at a Lenovo event by myself for 12 minutes and then on a panel with Ashton Kutcher. Met with Hollywood’s Steve Jobs and had a yarn about robots, AI, VR, AR and bionic people! (Why stop at 20/20 vision?)


Spoke at MIT's conference in Singapore, EmTech. Other speakers in my session spoke about autonomous robotic cargo ships, advances in drones and studying nature to make a single robot that can both roll down inclines and walk along flat surfaces!

How amazing are the gardens in Singapore? When I'm surrounded by beautiful nature like this, I love getting my notebook out and writing copious notes and plans.

... And the gardens are just as spectacular in the evening! It's like the movie Avatar!
![]()
Spent the entire Sunday working in the garage with Garth Bradbeer and Tom Cooper working on a robotic prototype. We worked until 1am that night, and many nights before and after... and we achieved our goal for the year! :)

I was awarded the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) Diversity Award for my work with Robogals. It was sponsored by Airbus. Here is a photo of me accepting the award from Airbus 380's Executive Vice President Engineering, Charles Champion, and Global Engineering Deans Council Chair, Professor John Beynon.
This article by the Courier Mail does a very good job of entertainingly summarising the Award.

Following that, I spoke at the World Engineering Education Forum, hosted by GEDC, alongside my fellow finalists for the Award.

Playing with robots in the office with Kyle van Dordrecht. We timed ourselves putting a robotics kit together... then we modified the kit.


Forbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.
I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.
Spoke in Hong Kong at the the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) on 9 July. The WAGGGS is the largest voluntary organisation...
“I go to Imperial College”, “I’m applying to MIT”, “I play bowls for my county”, or “I’m a pro-series gamer” means nothing to the person who doesn’t know...
The Australian Department of Home Affairs decided to celebrate the Australian of the Year awards with this short animated video of past award...
Go out and make those connections, meet people, have conversations. It may land you a dream job. My friend got an engineering internship in China by...
I think it's important to have one person that says the final 'yes' to all the decisions in a start-up. That one person should be the visionary...
People don't think about you. They're too busy worrying about how you think about them.
After Utah, I flew to Lyon, France to speak at the World Entrepreneurship Forum. It was fantastic to meet with successful entrepreneurs from all...
It was a whirlwind of a week in Malaysia at Shell Eco-marathon Asia. The air was constantly buzzing with intense excitement and anticipation, mixed...
A month ago, I came up with a list of the things I wanted to consider during my YouthActionNet Fellowship retreat. In the 24 hours that it took me...
I was starting up my new start-up and I was finding it hard to get my desired co-founder to commit. So I thought back over my experiences of the...