Women in STEM - Yoky Matsuoka
Updated: May 8, 2022
Yoky Matsuoka was born in Japan and moved to California when she was just 16 years old.
A professional tennis player in her youth, Yoky’s interest in robotics and technology began when she had an idea for building a robotic tennis player. She soon realized that her idea was unrealistic, but her interest in those fields continued to grow.
Yoky went on to obtain her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and then went on to get her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT. Throughout her entire career, Yoky has been involved in projects for most of the tech giants, including Twitter, Apple, and Google. Yoky served as the Chief Technology Officer of Google Nest and was one of the co-founders of Google X.
Yoky has also served as an associate professor at the University of Washington. One of her colleagues, the Dean of the Washington College of Engineering, described Yoky as, “a mechanical engineer, neuroscientist, bioengineer, robotics expert, and computer scientist all in one… with the ability to see what is possible by combining all of these disciplines.”
Yoky Matsuoka now serves as CEO and Founder of Yohana (Yo Labs) which is a subsidiary of Panasonic. Yohana is an AI-powered personal assistant that helps busy parents streamline tasks and create more free time.
To learn even more about Yoky Matsuoka, you can read her entire Wikipedia article:
And also check out her TEDx Talk on YouTube:
