Faculty

Aaron Steinfeld, with atrium in background

Aaron Steinfeld

Aaron’s specialty is human-robot interaction and advanced transportation. He is interested in how to enable timely and appropriate interaction when interfaces are restricted through design, tasks, the environment, time pressures, and/or user abilities. He utilizes training and experience in robotics, intelligent transportation, rehabilitation, human factors and ergonomics, human-computer interaction, universal design, and research methods.
www.cs.cmu.edu/~astein


Staff

Liz Carter

Liz Carter

Liz is currently a project scientist at the Robotics Institute examining people’s interactions with social robots. Previously, she performed research with interactive avatars for children, assessing new computer animation methods, and neuroimaging for autism. She received her Ph.D. from the CMU Psychology Department and her B.A. from Yale University.
www.lizcarter.net


Suresh Kumaar Jayaraman facing the camera

Suresh Kumaar Jayaraman

Suresh is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Robotics Institute. He is broadly interested in developing trustworthy robots for human-robot collaboration through effective communication. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
jskumaar.github.io


Oscar J. Romero

Oscar is a project scientist at the Robotics Institute. He is interested in building large-scale Intelligent Personal Assistants to support people on their daily tasks. His current work at TBD Lab focuses on inclusive conversational agents that learn and support people with disabilities. His research interests lies at the intersection of cognitive systems, AI, and conversational systems. At Carnegie Mellon, he has worked on projects like Tiramisu (Robotics Institute); InMind, SARA, and SOGO (Machine Learning Department); and RCTA (Psychology Department). He received his Ph.D. from Technical University of Madrid and his B.Sc. from Distrital University of Colombia.
oscarr@andrew.cmu.edu
www.cs.cmu.edu/~oscarr


Anthony Tomasic

Anthony Tomasic

Anthony works closely with the TBD Lab as an external consultant. For 15 years he was a Senior Systems Scientist at CMU. He was co-Founder and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Master of Computational Data Science degree program (MCDS). Anthony also co-founded the Master of Science in Product Management. This degree program focuses on transitioning software engineers to product management roles. Currently Anthony is CEO of Fort Alto Inc, an Internet of Things low-code application platform company. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton and his MBA from Carnegie Mellon.
www.linkedin.com/in/anthonytomasic


Advised Graduate Students

Abena, facing the camera

Abena Boadi-Agyemang

Abena is a PhD student in the Robotics Institute.  She is broadly interested in the design of accessible interfaces to support people with disabilities.  Her current work focuses on the design and evaluation of robotic interfaces to help people with visual impairments navigate complex indoor spaces.
abena.myportfolio.com/about


Rayna Hata, wearing a red shirt with a grey portrait background

Rayna Hata

Rayna is a PhD student in the Robotics Institute. She is broadly interested in human robot interactions in the area of accessibility and care for those with disabilities. Her current research area includes assistive devices for those with blindness or low vision.
rhata@andrew.cmu.edu


Peya Mowar, wearing a multi-color shirt in front of a grey background

Peya Mowar

Peya is an MS student at the Robotics Institute. She is interested in building and evaluating human-centered AI systems for enabling technological access to people with disabilities. Her current work focuses on designing accessible web interfaces through generative AI models.
peyajm29.github.io


Huy, wearing a blue suit with a white background

Huy Quyen Ngo

Huy Quyen (Huy) is a PhD student in the Robotics Institute. He is broadly interested in robotic manipulation and learning in the human-robot interaction domain. He is currently working on robot proficiency self-assessment, specifically the design of motion behaviors in robots that communicate non-verbal cues related to task performance.
ngohuyquyen.github.io


Kate Shih

Kate Shih

Kate is a PhD student at the Robotics Institute. Her current research focuses on the application of verifiably safe control to human-robot interaction. More generally, she’s interested in developing technologies that help people maintain and improve their independence and quality of life.
kshih@andrew.cmu.edu


Allan Wang

Allan Wang

Allan is a final-year PhD student at the Robotics Institute. His research interest is in social navigation. He studies how pedestrians interact with each other. His aim is to develop learning based methods to teach mobile robots to conform to our social rules while navigating in public spaces.
allanwan@cs.cmu.edu


Other Students

Yiqing Sun

Aparna Warrier

Meng-Hsin Wu


Thesis Alumni (Reverse Chronological)

Cathy Jiao (MS): PhD student at CMU Language Technologies Institute

Samantha Reig (PhD): University of Massachusetts Lowell

Lynn Kirabo (PhD): Harvey Mudd College

Mary Theresa Hatfalvi (MS): Honeywell

Xiang Zhi Tan (PhD): Northeastern University

Sarthak Ahuja (MS): Amazon

Qian Yang (PhD): Cornell University

Abhijat Biswas (MS): PhD student at CMU Robotics Institute

Ceci Morales (MS): PhD student at CMU Robotics Institute

Sarah Tan (MS): Rotolily

Marynel Vázquez (MS, PhD): Yale University

Ishani Chatterjee (MS): Postdoc at Oregon State University

Chandrayee Basu (MS): Postdoc at Stanford University

Poornima Kaniarasu (MS): Aurora


Postdoc and Staff Alumni


Student Alumni

Obehioye Adubor
Archana Ajith
Sara Amick
Yufei An
Kevin Araujo
Sarah Barbour
Devon Barry
Rachael Bennett
Rahul Bhat
Alex Billings
Zhong Yu Bing
Dewey Black
Leslie Bloomfield
Michelle Bova
Christian Bruggeman
David Bunker
Suyeon Cha
Madeline Chan
Claire Chen
Joe Connolly
Yasser Corzo
Steven Cunden
Shaan Dave
Sophia Deng
Ximin “Teddy” Ding
Omer Elhiraika
Mercedes Farrell
Liyao Fu
Sofia Gadea Omelchenko
William Goodale
Meghal Gosalia
Niloy Gupta
Eric Hochendoner
Chen Hong
Xiao (Ivy) He
Hanzhang “Echo” Hu

Ran Huan
Miriam Israelowitz
Somakala Jagannathan
Krati Jain
Rufeng “Steven” Ji
Yang Jin
Gordon Johnston
Diane Keene
Saumya Kharbanda
Ildoo Kim
Stephanie Kimssy
Piyush Kumar
Jian Li
Jirachaya (Fern) Limprayoon
Yanyu Lin
Yinjia Liu
Xinyi Lu
Tewei Luo
Stephanie M Mahalchick
Erika Mason
Raj Mehta
Anusha Nagabandi
Amal Nanavati
Terence Nip
Prithu Pareek
Jonathan Park
Yuxin (Abbey) Pei
Dmitri Portnoy
Taylor Raack
Varsha Rajendra
Adithi Rao
Shree Rao
Michael Richter
Daniel Ringwalt
Jeong Min Seo
Vivek Shankar

Yizhou Shao
Gustavo Silvera
Sonya Simkin
Andrew Smith
Changdo Song
Rhomni St. John
Jennifer Suh
Bili Sun
Rosalie Traficante
Allison Tran
Lynn Urbina
Lauren Von Dehsen
Antian Wang
Clara Wang
Jialiang Wang
Le Wei
Yiyun Wei
Agnes Won
Yongzuan Wu
Yue Xing
Yifan Xing
Chenhao Yang
Xiyang Zhang
Tyrone Zhang


Visitors

Sikai Chen: Visiting scholar (2019-2022) while at Purdue University

Alvaro Castro-Gonzales: Faculty visitor (2017) from Universidad Carlos III Madrid

Motoki Shino: Faculty visitor (2010-2011) from University of Tokyo


Others

During video calls with lab members, you may be lucky enough to see a live studio audience.