Speakers

Brian Scassellati

Brian Scassellati is a Professor of Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and Mechanical Engineering at Yale University and Director of the NSF Expedition on Socially Assistive Robotics. His research focuses on building embodied computational models of human social behavior, especially the developmental progression of early social skills. Using computational modeling and socially interactive robots, his research evaluates models of how infants acquire social skills and assists in the diagnosis and quantification of disorders of social development (such as autism). His other interests include humanoid robots, human-robot interaction, artificial intelligence, machine perception, and social learning.

Dr. Scassellati received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. His dissertation work (Foundations for a Theory of Mind for a Humanoid Robot) with Rodney Brooks used models drawn from developmental psychology to build a primitive system for allowing robots to understand people. His work at MIT focused mainly on two well-known humanoid robots named Cog and Kismet. He also holds a Master of Engineering in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (1995), and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (1995) and Brain and Cognitive Science (1995), all from MIT.

Dr. Scassellati’s research in social robotics and assistive robotics has been recognized within the robotics community, the cognitive science community, and the broader scientific community. He was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2007 and received an NSF CAREER award in 2003. His work has been awarded five best-paper awards. He was the chairman of the IEEE Autonomous Mental Development Technical Committee from 2006 to 2007, the program chair of the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) in both 2007 and 2008, and the program chair for the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in 2009.

Gaurav Sukhatme

Gaurav S. Sukhatme is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC) and an Amazon Scholar. He is the Director of the USC School of Advanced Computing and the Executive Vice Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He holds the Donald M. Aldstadt Chair in Advanced Computing at USC. He was the Chairman of the USC Computer Science department from 2012-17. He received his undergraduate education in computer science and engineering at IIT Bombay and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from USC. Sukhatme is the co-director of the USC Robotics Research Laboratory and the USC Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory director. His research interests are in networked robots, learning robots, and field robotics. He has published extensively in these and related areas. Sukhatme has served as PI on numerous NSF, DARPA, and NASA grants. He was a Co-PI on the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), an NSF Science and Technology Center. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, AAAI, and the IEEE, a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Okawa Foundation research award, and an Amazon research award. He is one of the founders of the Robotics: Science and Systems conference. He was the program chair of the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and the 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robots and Systems. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Autonomous Robots (Springer Nature) and has served in the past as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and on the editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Computing.

Kostas Bekris

Kostas Bekris is a Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and an Amazon Scholar with Amazon Robotics since 2019. He is working in algorithmic robotics, where his group is developing algorithms for robot planning, learning and perception especially in the context of robot manipulation problems, robots with significant dynamics and a focus on taking advantage of novel soft, adaptive mechanisms. Applications include logistics and manufacturing as well as field robotics. He is serving as Editor of the Intern. Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) and has served as Program Chair for the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) and the Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR) conferences. His research has been supported by NSF, DHS, DOD and NASA, including a NASA Early Career Faculty award.

Rafael Fierro

Rafael Fierro is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of New Mexico. Prior to joining ECE’s Systems and Controls Group in August 2007, Dr. Fierro held a postdoctoral appointment with the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and a faculty position with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Fierro has taught courses in robotics, control of hybrid systems, and linear systems. His research interests include hybrid and embedded systems, heterogeneous multivehicle coordination, cooperative and distributed control of multi-agent systems, mobile sensor networks, and robotics. His work has been funded by the Army Research Office and NSF. Rafael Fierro directs ECE’s Multi-Agent, Robotics, Hybrid and Embedded Systems (MARHES) Laboratory. MARHES is an interdisciplinary laboratory dedicated to research and education in hybrid and embedded systems and robotics. Also, Dr. Fierro and his group are developing “Robotic Games” with the goal of stimulating the interest of children and increasing their appreciation for science, math and engineering. Dr. Fierro was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and a 2004 NSF CAREER award. He is serving as associate editor for the Journal of Intelligent and Robotics Systems, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, and IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.

Nils Napp

Nils Napp is an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and part of the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL). Before that, he was an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University at Buffalo. His research is the intersection of algorithm and robot design. He especially enjoys projects that focus on how to map mathematical insights to physical systems to allow them to perform new tasks and behaviors. He’s a 2019 NSF CAREER award recipient and a finalist and occasional winner of several best paper awards: RSS10, DARS12, DARS18, RSS18.

Dimitra Panagou

Dimitra Panagou received the Diploma and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2006 and 2012, respectively. In September 2014 she joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor. Since July 2022 she is an Associate Professor with the newly established Department of Robotics, with a courtesy appointment with the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, she was a postdoctoral research associate with the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2012-2014), a visiting research scholar with the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania (June 2013, Fall 2010) and a visiting research scholar with the University of Delaware, Mechanical Engineering Department (Spring 2009). Her research program spans the areas of nonlinear systems and control; multi-agent systems, autonomy and control; and aerospace robotics. She is particularly interested in the development of provably-correct methods for the safe and secure (resilient) operation of autonomous systems in complex missions, with applications in robot/sensor networks and multi-vehicle systems (ground, marine, aerial, space) under uncertainty. She is a recipient of the NASA Early Career Faculty Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the George J. Huebner, Jr. Research Excellence Award, and a Senior Member of the IEEE and the AIAA.

Kirstin Hagelskjaer Petersen

Kirstin Petersen is an Associate Professor and Aref and Manon Lahham Faculty Fellow in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. Her lab, the Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab, is focused on the design and coordination of robot collectives able to achieve complex behaviors beyond the reach of an individual, and corresponding studies on how social insects do so in nature. Major research topics include swarm intelligence, embodied intelligence, soft robots, and bio-hybrid systems. Petersen did her postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and her PhD at Harvard University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Her graduate work was featured in and on the cover of Science, she was elected among the top 25 women to know in robotics by Robohub in 2018, received the Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering in 2019, the NSF CAREER award and the Cornell College of Engineering Excellence in Research Award in 2021, the Douglas Whitney ‘61 Excellence in Teaching Award in the Cornell College of Engineering in 2022, and was elevated to IEEE senior member in 2024.

Matthias Scheutz

Matthias Scheutz is a Professor of Computer Science at Tufts University. Matthias Scheutz received a PhD degree in philosophy from the University of Vienna and a joint Ph.D. in cognitive science and computer science from Indiana University. He is the Karol Family Applied Technology Professor of computer and cognitive science in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University in the School of Engineering, and Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory and the HRI Masters and PhD programs. He has over 400 peer-reviewed publications in artificial intelligence, artificial life, agent-based computing, natural language understanding, cognitive modeling, robotics, human-robot interaction and foundations of cognitive science. His current research focuses on complex ethical cognitive robots with natural language interaction, problem-solving, and instruction-based learning capabilities in open worlds.

David Shilliday

David Shilliday is Vice President and General Manager of the Honeywell UAM/UAS organization, a dedicated business unit focused on uncrewed vehicles, electric and hybrid electric VTOL’s and autonomous systems. David has been with Honeywell for over 20 years, most recently serving as the Vice President and General Manager for the Power Systems business developing auxiliary power systems, electric and hybrid-electric propulsion systems and hydrogen fuel cells. Prior to that, he served as the Vice President of EMEAI Airlines, where he led the sales, customer account, and channel management functions for the Airlines Aftermarket in that region. David holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the W. P. Carey School at Arizona State University. He holds a number of patents on innovative automotive safety technology and has published cooperative research in the field. David currently lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife, Michelle, and his children, Holden and Madelyn.