On top of the world

3 Jan 2020

A dream to design and build social robots has taken student Anastasia Laczko around the world.

Anastasia in front of the Gamcheon Culture Village (Busan, South Korea).

Walking through a bamboo forest in the parks surrounding the National Museum of Korea, Anastasia Laczko could hardly feel further away from her sunny Queensland home.

The 8000 kilometres between Seoul and the Gold Coast is vast, but Anastasia is not one to shy away from an adventure, and what an adventure she’s having.

2019 was an exciting year for this fourth-year mechatronic engineering and information technology student, as she switched out a lecture theatre in Brisbane for the bustling streets of Bangalore in India while she completed a robotics internship with the Infosys Centre for Emerging Technology Solutions.

After two months in India and a quick hop, skip and jump over to Deajeon, Korea, she began her semester studying abroad at UQ’s partner institute, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, with the support of a New Colombo Plan Mobility Grant.

Before starting at UQ, Anastasia said she had never travelled outside Australia, but now she is drinking in the opportunities that the University has to offer.

Read full story in ingenuity magazine

In November 2019, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Women, Senator the Hon. Marise Payne, named Anastasia one of 51 new 2019-20 New Colombo Plan (NCP) Alumni Ambassadors at a ceremony in Canberra.

Supported as part of an innovative partnership between the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Asialink Business, the new NCP Alumni Ambassadors will play a key role in promoting the NCP on their university campuses and in their communities, and deepening Australia’s connections with the Indo-Pacific.

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