Skip to main content

“How Yoky Matsuoka created the modern robotic hand, and what the rest of us can learn from her”

GeekWire excerpts a portion of the forthcoming book “Mastery” by Robert Greene which profiles former UW CSE professor Yoky Matsuoka, now VP of Technology at Nest:

“Her mind naturally works better on a larger scale, continually pondering the connections between things on high levels— what makes the human hand so weirdly perfect, how the hand has influenced who we are and how we think. With these large questions governing her research, she avoids becoming narrowly focused on technical issues without understanding the bigger picture. Thinking on such a high level frees the mind up to investigate from all different angles: Why are the bones of the hand this way? What makes the palm so malleable? How does the sense of touch influence our thinking in general? It allows her to go deeply into the details without losing a sense of the why.”

Read the GeekWire post here.

Yoky will deliver the UW CSE colloquium on Thursday December 6 at 3:30.

news-cs.txt ege1453