Founding director of the University of Pennsylvania's General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception (GRASP) Laboratory, Bajcsy is an American engineer and computer scientist specializing in robotics. She also served as head of the National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, overseeing a $500 million budget.
At the University of Pennsylvania, she held the role of professor and chair of computer science and engineering and was a member of the Neurosciences Institute in the School of Medicine. She supervised at least 26 doctoral students there. She held a professorship in electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was also director emerita of CITRIS (the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society).
She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2005.
