Camille Beatty
Driven by an intense curiosity about how things work, Camille started taking apart household electronics when she was 10, began building her own custom robots when she was 11, and founded her own robotics company when she was 13. Her start-up, Beatty Robotics, builds highly functional replicas of Mars Rovers and other spacecraft for interactive museums and aerospace companies around the world.
Camille’s robots became well known after she built two NASA-style Mars Rovers for the New York Hall of Science. Museum visitors drive a six-wheeled, custom-machined aluminum robot through a Mars-scape in search for evidence of past life on Mars using infrared cameras, navigational sensors, and other scientific instruments. Camille also builds multi-legged walking creatures, tracked tactical platforms, and other robots for various uses.
After Camille and her robots were featured on Good Morning America, Fox News, Popular Science, and Space.com, she was commended by the Director of NASA and the Mars Rover engineers at JPL for the accuracy of her work. Soon after, Camille was invited by President Obama to demonstrate her robots in the White House, where he gave a speech to the nation citing Camille as a shining example of American entrepreneurial spirit.
Camille was the winner of the 2013 World Maker Faire and has been heavily involved in the global Maker Movement, including being part of the first Maker Faire at the White House on President Obama’s “Day of Making.”
In 2015, Camille’s Beatty Robotics company was contracted to design and build the Lunar Rover prototype for Space-LS, a U.K. aerospace company, in their bid for the Lunar X-Prize.
Today, Camille’s Mars Rovers and other robots are operating in science and space museums around the world, including the United States, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, and other countries.
As her business grew, Camille began giving speeches in schools to promote STEM for young boys and girls in her rural area. From there, she began giving robotics presentations at university engineering departments. She was then invited to attend several business innovation conferences as a motivational speaker, where she spoke to hundreds of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and CEOs. In 2015, she participated in an international think tank (hosted by Bankinter in Madrid, Spain) to study the economic and sociological effects of robotics and artificial intelligence on the global labor market.
While at Columbia University, Camille hopes to build on the entrepreneurial and technical skills she developed in her robotics workshop by pursuing a degree in Industrial Engineering / Financial Technology. She looks forward to getting involved in the start-up and entrepreneurship opportunities on campus. In the future, she hopes to work in the finance industry, and eventually launch a company that combines the principles of engineering, psychology/economics, and finance.