[excited chattering]
>> Nice to meet you again.
My name is Wami.
>> Hi, how are you?
Regina.
>> I'm Grant.
>> Hi, Grant.
>> Eva.
>> How you doing, Eva?
>> It's nice to meet you.
>> So what you guys doing in here?
>> Oh yes!
>> Grant: So we're interested in the controls.
There are other people that do design work.
>> Regina: This is like luxury accommodations.
>> Grant: Oh, yes.
[students laughing and chattering]
>> To see, to witness, what we're witnessing
with you, with those students.
It's very emotional.
>> I was blown away.
You talk about wanting to
make things different for people of color.
Imagine how that feels when we walked in
to get the tour of our lab
and there's a Black female undergraduate,
there are two Black male graduate students,
and one completing PhD student
who is talking about everything that's going on.
Not just in the lab, but in our building.
I was literally blown away.
>> Don't try to do that.
[laughing]
I can't say, you know.
>> Wami: - Like, wait a minute.
>> Ronald: We want be supportive of young students
being impactful in the future.
Her father's scholarship that we endowed
was really a catalyst for a new era of our foundation.
Because when Dean Gallimore assumed the position,
he was he was traveling around meeting donors.
And when we met him, that relationship started there
and it has just blossomed.
When he talked about the mission that he had
for building world-class engineers and scientists
who were going to be great global citizens
and who worked towards the common good.
And he wanted to do so while making it accessible
to a lot of people
with his diversity, equity and inclusion initiative.
That's music to our ears because, remember, her father
couldn't be a practicing engineer
and that had a lot to do with race.
Given how we feel about wanting to prepare
young folks of color for the future,
what better way to help them if not to support robotics?
Robotics is a natural fit for that
because where else does the future lie, when you think about
AI, machine learning, robotics and that kind of stuff.
The future is there.
[loud stomping]
>> Regina: Hey!
[loud stomping]
[students chattering and laughing]
>> Wami: Oh, I love it!
>> Regina: Very good.
>> Ronald: Well, we're fortunate enough to fund
the Department Chair of Robotics.
And I think it's the first of its kind
in certainly top-tier engineering institutions.
And so we couldn't be more proud than to be able to have
Dawn as the Ronald and Regina Department Chair.
>> Regina: And to learn today how robotics almost is
an umbrella field that so many other
STEM fields fit into, was interesting from the students.
And to meet the first African American student
that would graduate with a PhD in robotics
was special today as well.
>> Ronald: We like "firsts", but we'd like for them to go away.
I was was told that we're the first Blacks to
endow a Chair in the College of Engineering.
That's wonderful.
However, I would like there to be just a string of those.
Our goal is for it to become passe
because there's just so many of them.
>> Regina: Did you always know you were a smart kid?
[laughs]
>> Anushka: I think it was the teachers
that instilled the confidence in me.
It's my teachers that made me realize my potential.
It was definitely not on my own.
It was instilled by my parents, my grandparents,
the people that I surrounded myself with,
my friends, my family.
So, my father was born in Uganda.
He moved to the USA
because of a genocide that occurred there.
And my mother was born in India and she immigrated here
for more education opportunities and more job opportunities.
My grandfather studied in India.
He got an engineering degree
and he was able to practice engineering.
I saw firsthand how education has turned our lives around.
>> Regina: Your parents allowed you to dream.
A lot of children of color they don't.
They're not allowed to dream like that.
Their dreams are, if they have them, are so limited
and boy, can you imagine not having a dream?
I mean that almost translates to hopelessness.
That's not a good place to be, you know?
To see your dreams realized,
to see their dreams coming to fruition
that is really something.
For what we've given, we've gotten tenfold in return.
We couldn't begin to pay for what we've received.