- Mentored over 100 undergraduate students, many of whom have participated in research publications and gone on to successful careers in robotics and related fields
- Published extensively on autonomous systems capable of interpreting and responding to human social behavior
Research Experience
- Co-PI in the NSF AI Institute for Advancing Education (AI4EE) to develop AI solutions addressing the shortage of speech-language pathologists in the US education system
- Applications of socially assistive robotics (SAR) in healthcare and education
- People-aware robot navigation that optimizes for both social appropriateness and goal-oriented behavior
- Long-term human-robot interaction (lt-HRI) studying how humans develop and sustain relationships with robots in real-world settings
Education
- B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester
- M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, under the guidance of Prof. Maja Matarić
- Postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University’s Social Robotics Lab, working with Prof. Brian Scassellati
Background
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Founding Director of the Autonomous Robotics Center of Nevada (ARCoN). Research interests include human-robot interaction, socially assistive robotics (SAR), socially aware robot navigation, and long-term human-robot interaction.