I am one of only nine faculty, across all of Duke, to be named the 2026 Bass Chair –
the honor that recognizes faculty whose teaching and research exemplify Duke’s commitment to undergraduate education.
I am so very honored. Undergraduate education, and undergraduate research in particular, are a core part of the mission of my lab. While at Duke, up to now I already mentored more than 60 Duke University undergraduate students from 7 different departments – ECE, CS, BME, MEMS, Neuroscience, Visual and Media Studies, and Mathematics, – many of whom stayed in the lab over multiple semesters, as well as 12 undergraduate students from other universities. I worked with undergraduate students previously as well, at Princeton as well as at Columbia – which back in the days I’ve strongly recommended to others to consider as well. With deep gratitude to students who have trusted me to mentor them, and with sincere thanks to many members of my lab who have been instrumental in carrying out this important part of our research mission.
About Maria Gorlatova
Dr. Maria Gorlatova is the Sternberg Family Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. Her research centers on pervasive computing technologies, with a focus on spatial computing and next-generation augmented reality. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees (Summa Cum Laude) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada. She spent two years at Princeton University’s Electrical Engineering Department as an Associate Research Scholar and Associate Director of the Princeton University EDGE Lab. Dr. Gorlatova was named one of the N2Women Rising Stars and has received multiple awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), the DARPA Director’s Fellowship, the IEEE ISMAR 2025 Best Paper Award, the IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communications, and research awards from Meta, Cisco, and IBM. She served as the TPC Co-chair of ACM/IEEE IPSN 2023, the General Co-Chair of the 2025 NSF Workshop on Networking and Systems Challenges in Immersive Computing, and the TPC Co-chair of ACM/IEEE SenSys 2025.
