New associate professor brings international experience to college
Juan Rojas brings a passion for robotics, his Christian faith and football to Lipscomb.
Janel Shoun-Smith |
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has welcomed a new faculty member this spring: Assistant Professor Dr. Juan Rojas (or, as he likes his students to call him, Dr. Juan). Rojas brings a culturally and internationally diverse background to the college as well as expertise in intelligent robotics.
Filling the void left by the retirement of Greg Nordstrom, Rojas will be taking on co-coordination of the college’s annual robotics outreach program: Music City BEST, for middle and high school students, and will bring his experience in nurturing international partnerships to conduct engineering research to bear in the department.
Rojas, a native of Mexico City, Mexico, has had three passions in his life: Football, robotics and his Christian faith. Each has led him to strike out into a new section of the globe.
Growing up in Mexico, he was passionate for football. He played on two national championship-winning teams, and also coached two national championship-winning teams. Dreaming of playing in the NFL, he applied to Division 1 universities in the U.S. and decided to go to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he walked-on to the football team.
While playing for the Commodores, he earned a bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. with a focus on intelligent robotics.
During his undergraduate years at Vanderbilt, one of his teammates shared his faith with him, and he began studying the Bible. His life was transformed, and that led to his third passion in life: discipleship. Rojas has been active in campus ministry and international missions. He spent 14 years in Asia working in universities while also ministering there.
In China, Rojas worked with different universities and carried out research. He also carried out a post-doctoral fellowship at the Task Manipulation and Vision Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology in Tsukuba, Japan.
Rojas has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed conferences, journals and books since 2005. His expertise in intelligent robotics focuses on robots capable of autonomous decision-making in unstructured environments.
A chance trip through Nashville brought Lipscomb University to his attention and eventually was called to serve here. Rojas will also be assisting with the AERO summer bridge program in mathematics.
Being a former football player and coach makes him a little bit more intense than the average professor at times, he said, but it also makes him more passionate about his top-quality engineering and crafting his students into top-quality engineers.