I am a roboticist working at the intersection of machine learning, planning and decision-making, and imitation learning. If it’s a challenging problem that would make robots more useful for someone out there, I am most likely interested.
I am currently an engineer at Apple in the Special Projects Group.
Before that, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, working with Prof. Aude Billard.
I completed a PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. My research focused on applying imitation learning techniques to difficult decision-making problems in robotics. My thesis was on getting robots to understand natural-language directions in unstructured unknown environments.
I’ve been lucky to work with some amazing people, listed below in (roughly) most-to-least recent order below.
At EPFL, I was working with José Medina, Klas Kronander, and Aude Billard along with other members of the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA).
During my time at CMU, I worked with my advisor Tony Stentz, and also Drew Bagnell, Tom Kollar, and Manuela Veloso, as well as researchers from Nicholas Roy’s Robust Robotics Group at MIT, principally Matthew Walter, Tom Howard, and Sachi Hemachandra.
Before starting graduate school I spent one year in Australia at CSIRO, working primarily with Ash Tews and other members of the Autonomous Systems Lab.
During my undergraduate at CMU, I was fortunate to do research with Sanjiv Singh, George Kantor, Howie Choset, and many of the great professors there.
I successfully defended my thesis on natural language direction following for robots in unstructured unknown environments in January of 2015. My thesis committee consisted of Tony Stentz, Drew Bagnell, Manuela Veloso, and Nick Roy (MIT).
Besides enabling robots to do cool and useful things, I am a big fan of mountains.
I’ve been lucky to climb in a variety of places around the world; some highlights have been in Switzerland (Eiger, Matterhorn), France (around Chamonix), Canada (Bugaboos), Wyoming (Pingora, Gannett Peak), and Morocco (Mt. Toubkal).
More recently, I’ve gotten interested in Ski Touring and Ski Mountaineering, and in 2016 completed the mythical Haute Route ski tour through France, Italy, and Switzerland.