Our Team
Get to know our team of awesome talents
Heather Knight
Assistant Professor
Dr. Heather Knight received her postdoc at Stanford University exploring minimal robots and autonomous car interfaces, a PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University exploring Expressive Motion for Low Degree of Freedom Robots, and M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she developed a sensate skin for a robot teddy bear at the MIT Media Lab.
Current Students
PhD Students
Alexandra Bacula
PhD Student
Alexandra received her BS in Aerospace Engineering in 2018 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include human-robot interaction and creating movement recognizable to human users on non-humanoid platforms.
Deanna Flynn
Artificial Intelligence Ph.D. student, Deanna received her B.S. in Computer Science and minor in Mathematics from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2020. Her current research interests lie in cognitive robotics and creative problem solving.
Abrar Fallatah
PhD Student
Abrar received her MS in HCI in 2015 from DePaul University. Her research interests include creating intuitive controllers for multiple service robot using UCD.
MS Students
Brett Stoddard
Brett received his BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University in 2019. His research focuses on effective user interface design with a focus on appropriate level of abstraction for human-in-the-loop control.
Shubham Patil
Shubham received his B.Tech. in Electronics from Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute in 2019. His current research interests lie in computer vision and user interface design.
Undergrad Researchers
Douglas Crocker
ECE
Susan Liu
CS
Sierra Loiselle
ECE
Breanne Oo
CS
Alumni
MS Student
Yao-Lin Tsai
MS Project in Robotics, “One Service Robot’s Exploration of Entertainment Methods During COVID-19,” Summer 2020
Abhijeet Agnihotri
PhD Student
Abhijeet have research interests in non-verbal communication, expressive motion and robot personality. In the past he have worked with ChairBots (Robotic Chairs), currently looking at contextualized personalization system for service robots.
Parthasarathy Reddy
MS Project in Robotics, “Robot vs. Stick: The Impact of Anthropomorphism on the Use of Hand Sanitizer,” Summer 2020
Alison Shutterly
MS Project in Robotics: “Collision-Based Communication,” Spring 2018
Janani Swaminathan
MS Thesis in Robotics, “Systems and Methods in Multi-Robot Comedy,” Summer 2020
Undergrad Honors Thesis
Jaden Berger
MIME Honors Thesis
“Expressive Motion in Simple Robotics,” Fall 2021
Chinmay Wadgaonkar
Undergraduate Student Chinmay is studying ECE with a minor in CS. He enjoy working with robots and exploring the realms of social privacy with regards to human robot interactions.
Undergrad nsf reu Program
Victoria Chen
Rutgers University
Summer 2021, Robots Feeding Humans
Amy Chan
Wellesley
Summer 2019, Personality through Motion
Madison Miller
Truman State
Summer 2020, Multi-Robot Comedy
Akim Williams
UCSC
Summer 2018, Robot Social Privacy
Jane Akintoye
University of Virginia
Summer 2019, Portable Robot Comedy
Brett Altena
Iowa State
Summer 2018, ChairBot Cafe
Additional Undergrad Researchers
Avi Desai
CS, Winter 2021-Spring 2021, ChairBots UI
Malhar Damle
General Engineering, Winter 2021-Spring 2021, ChairBots UI
Neranjan Kuppuswamy
EECS, Fall 2019-Summer 2020, VR Collisions
Anisa Nasse
EECS, Fall 2018-Spring 2019, ChairBots
Timothy Bui
EECS, Fall 2018-Winter 2019, Robot Comedy
Jason Ho
CS, Winter 2021-Spring 2021, ChairBots UI
Sowmya Jujjuri
EECS, Fall 2019-Spring 2021, Robot Comedy
Jiaji Sun
EECS, Fall 2019-Winter 2020, ResoBot UI
John Enriquez
MIME, Winter 2018-Spring 2019, VR Collisions
Shreyans Khunteta
EECS, Fall 2017-Spring 2018, ChairBots
Malhar Damle
General Engineering, Winter 2021-Spring 2021, ChairBots UI
Denisse Alvarado
EECS, Fall 2019-Summer 2020, Entertainment Robots
Johannes Freischuetz
EECS, Spring 2018-Fall 2019, VR Collisions
Theodora Perednia
Undergraduate Student Theodora is working towards a BS in Mechanical Engineering. She has worked with the ChairBot and is working on new toppers to expand the robot fleet.
Jazmyne Malone
Physics, Fall 2017-Spring 2018, Collision-based Communication
Capstone Projects
“How to Make an Effective Robot Comedian,” Fall 2017-Spring 2018
EECS: Arthur Shing, Kevin Talik, Anish Asrani
Contributors
Jeff Klow
MS, Robotics, 2020, ResoBot
Jesse Rond
MS, Robotics, 2018-2019, ImprovBot
Brian Layng
MS, Robotics, 2018-2019, ChairBots
Christopher Bollinger
MS, Robotics, 2019, ResoBot
Alan Sanchez
PhD, Robotics, 2018-2019, ImprovBot
Bohkyung Chun
Robot Anthropologist
Boh is an applied cultural anthropologist who specializes in social studies of human-machine interaction. She is working on the ethnographic HRI study of ClearPath OTTO Motors’ robots.
Samarendra Hedaoo
EECS Instructor
Samar received his MS in Computer Applications in 2012 from Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research. His research interests include perceptions and social attitude toward humanoid robots data usage in social grey-areas like cafes.
Artists-in-Residence
Kristina Drzaic
Narrative Video Game Designer, https://www.linkedin.com/in/drzaic/
Jeremy Urann
Artist in Residence Jeremy received his BS in Theatre from Western Washington University. He is interested in understanding and exploring the symbiotic relationship between performance, robots, and education.
https://www.jeremyurann.com/
David Minor
Ballet Dancer, https://www.davidminormusic.com/about
Robin Jönsson
Choreographer, https://www.robinjonsson.net/