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Michael KaessView profile

Associate Professor

• Robotics
• Computer Vision
• SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping)
• +6 more

Michael Kaess is an Associate Professor at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), within the School of Computer Science. He leads the Robot Perception Lab (RPL) and contributes to the Field Robotics Center (FRC) and Computer Vision Group (CV). His research focuses on efficient perception algorithms for mobile robots, particularly in 3D mapping, SLAM, and sensor fusion using vision, LiDAR, inertial, and sonar data. Kaess holds a PhD in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and was a postdoc at MIT's Marine Robotics Lab. Education: Georgia Institute of Technology, PhD in Computer Science (2008) MIT, Postdoctoral Associate (2008–2010) Research Interests: Kaess develops algorithms for robust and efficient inference in robotics, emphasizing factor graphs and linear algebra. His work spans underwater robotics, aerial systems, tactile SLAM, and multi-sensor integration. Key areas include SLAM with planes/lines, imaging sonar reconstruction, and neural field methods for LiDAR-visual fusion. Publications: Over 145 papers, including work on EDPLVO (visual odometry), HoloOcean (underwater simulation), and neural radiance fields with LiDAR. Recent trends focus on robust incremental smoothing, acoustic-optical fusion, and real-time volumetric mapping. Awards: Recognized with the RSS Test of Time Award (2020), Outstanding Associate Editor (2022), and paper awards at ICRA/ICRA. Active in conference organization (IROS/ICRA program committees). Advising & Grants: Supervises 10+ current PhD/MSc students, with past advisees contributing to CoRL/ICRA work. Manages grants in perception, autonomy, and marine robotics. Teaches courses like Robot Localization and Mapping (16-833). Labs/Teams: Directs RPL, collaborates with FRC on field robotics. Develops open-source tools like GTSAM (GNU Toolkit for Smoothing and Mapping).

Sicun GaoView profile

Associate Professor

• Algorithms and Optimization
• Automated Reasoning
• Cyber-Physical Systems
• +3 more

Sicun Gao is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on practical algorithms for NP-hard search and optimization problems in computational systems, emphasizing combinatorial perspectives in numerical and statistical contexts to achieve reliable autonomy. Research Interests: Automated reasoning, Hamilton-Jacobi reachability, safe reinforcement learning, control barrier functions, and optimization in cyber-physical systems. Teaching: Courses on AI search, optimization, and graduate research seminars. The 15 most recent publications highlight advancements in safe AI control, motion planning, and policy optimization, often integrating neural networks with formal verification. Awards include the IEEE Power & Energy Society Technical Committee Prize Paper Award and the IROS RoboCup Best Paper Award. He advises PhD students working on AI-driven control and robotics, with alumni placed at institutions like Seoul National University, Amazon, and Apple. Grants include NSF Career, Air Force Young Investigator, and DARPA Assured Autonomy funding. His lab develops tools like dReal for automated reasoning in nonlinear theories over the reals.

J. Andrew BagnellView profile

Professor

• Machine Learning
• Robotics
• Control Theory
• +7 more

J. Andrew Bagnell is a Professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). His research bridges planning, control theory, and computational learning, focusing on systems that can self-optimize under partial models. Key projects include the LAIRLab (Learning Applied to Intelligent Robotics) and initiatives in the ARM-S and BIRD MURI programs. Research domains: Machine Learning, Robotics, Control Theory, Optimization, Probabilistic Modeling Key applications: Mobile Robotics, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Multi-Robot Decision Making Recent work emphasizes imitation learning, trajectory optimization, and game-theoretic algorithms for decision-making. His publications highlight collaborations with students and researchers on topics like online learning, planning under uncertainty, and autonomous systems. Notable affiliations include advising Gokul Swamy and past students such as Wen Sun and Anirudh Vemula. Labs: LAIRLab, ARM-S, BIRD MURI team.

Ann B LeeView profile

Professor

• Scientific Machine Learning
• Trust-Worthy UQ
• Likelihood-Free Inference
• +1 more

Ann B. Lee is a Professor and Co-Director of the PhD Program in Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University , with a joint appointment in the Department of Statistics & Data Science and the Machine Learning Department. Prior to joining CMU, she held positions as a J.W. Gibbs Assistant Professor at Yale University and a visiting research associate at Brown University. PhD in Physics, Brown University MSc/BSc in Engineering Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Her research focuses on statistical methodology for complex data in the physical sciences , emphasizing trustworthy inference, uncertainty quantification, and integration of classical statistics with machine learning. Recent work includes likelihood-free inference, calibrated forecasting, and diagnostics for generative models. The STAMPS research group , which she co-founded in 2018, hosts weekly meetings and public webinars. In Fall 2024, STAMPS will transition into a CMU Research Center. Recent publications span likelihood-free inference , climate modeling , and astronomy . Notable collaborations include applications to hurricane intensity guidance , galaxy redshift estimation , and cosmological parameter biases . She mentors PhD students and has advised multiple award-winning researchers, including ASA Best Student Paper Award winners. Her teaching includes advanced courses on probability, regression, and AI for climate sciences.

Jeff SchneiderView profile

Research Professor

• Machine Learning
• Autonomous Systems
• Reinforcement Learning
• +7 more

Jeff Schneider is a Research Professor at the Robotics Institute within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on active learning, data mining, reinforcement learning, optimization, and intelligent control , applied to industrial and commercial challenges. Current PhD Students : Anoushka Alavilli, Benjamin Freed, Tejus Gupta, Albert Xu, Brian Yang Current Masters Students : Wen-Tse Chen, Xintong Duan, Aman Mehra, Vedant Mundheda, Zhouchonghao Wu Past PhD Students : J. Andrew Bagnell, Viraj Mehta, Matthew Tesch Past Masters Students : Ravi Tej Akella, Swapnil Pande, Siddharth Venkatraman Schneider's research bridges machine learning and autonomous systems , particularly in reinforcement learning , multi-robot coordination , and self-driving car technology . His work emphasizes practical applications of learning algorithms in real-world scenarios. His recent publications highlight advancements in offline reinforcement learning , multi-agent policy coordination , and behavior planning for autonomous vehicles . These studies often integrate deep learning and probabilistic modeling to address complex control and decision-making problems. Labs: Auton Lab CMU Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research Consulting & Industry Impact: Schneider has consulted for organizations like Uber ATG, Psychogenics, and Schenley Park Research, applying machine learning to domains such as self-driving cars , nuclear fusion , marketing , and drug discovery .

Benjamin EysenbachView profile

Professor

• Reinforcement Learning
• Self-Supervised Learning
• Machine Learning
• +2 more

Benjamin Eysenbach leads the Princeton Reinforcement Learning Lab, where he designs algorithms that enable artificial intelligence systems to learn intelligent behaviors through trial-and-error, specializing in self-supervised methods that eliminate the need for human labels. He joined Princeton after completing his PhD in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University under Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Sergey Levine, supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Hertz Fellowship. His research bridges fundamental machine learning principles with practical applications in robotics and decision-making systems. Eysenbach's research focuses on developing self-supervised reinforcement learning algorithms that enable autonomous skill acquisition without external rewards. His investigations span contrastive learning methods, temporal abstraction techniques, and scalable architectures for goal-conditioned behaviors. These innovations aim to create more efficient and generalizable learning systems that can discover useful behaviors from unlabeled experience. Eysenbach's publications demonstrate consistent advancement in self-supervised RL methodologies, with recent work focusing increasingly on temporal abstraction and representation learning theory. His research shows progression from foundational contrastive RL frameworks toward more sophisticated analyses of generalization properties and uncertainty quantification. The 2025 works indicate expanding investigation into hierarchical control, probabilistic alignment, and hyper-deep network architectures. Eysenbach has been recognized with prestigious awards including the Hertz Fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, supporting his doctoral research in self-supervised RL methodologies. His work has been presented at top machine learning conferences including NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. As director of the Princeton Reinforcement Learning Lab, Eysenbach oversees research initiatives in self-supervised RL, including projects on intention-conditioned modeling, horizon generalization, and contrastive learning frameworks. He has secured funding from the Princeton AI Lab to study neural correlates of temporal contrast in decision-making. Eysenbach teaches courses in reinforcement learning and has developed new benchmarks like JaxGCRL to accelerate research in goal-conditioned RL.

• Computational Social Choice
• Algorithmic Game Theory
• Fairness in Machine Learning
• +3 more

Anson Kahng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Goergen Institute of Data Science at the University of Rochester. He previously held postdoctoral positions at the University of Toronto and completed his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Ariel Procaccia, focusing on computational social choice. PhD, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Undergraduate degree, Computer Science, Harvard College His research explores the intersection of computer science and democracy, developing frameworks like virtual democracy and liquid democracy while analyzing fairness in participatory budgeting and voting systems. He combines theoretical analysis with empirical methods, emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration. Recent work includes advancements in ranked choice voting optimization, fairness metrics for elections, and structural analysis in cryo-electron tomography. He has published in top venues such as IJCAI, AAAI, NeurIPS, and ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation. NeurIPS 2019 Spotlight Presentation (top 2.5% of submissions) Kahng advises PhD students Alina Chadwick and Joe Saber, and has mentored multiple undergraduate researchers. He teaches courses on algorithmic game theory and computational statistics at the University of Rochester.

Shixiang ZhuView profile

Assistant Professor

• Machine Learning
• Data Science
• Operations Research
• +7 more

Shixiang (Woody) Zhu is an Assistant Professor in Data Analytics at the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Georgia Institute of Technology (2022) and B.S./M.S. in Computer Science from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (2017). His research bridges machine learning, operations research, and statistics, focusing on sequential modeling, human-AI collaboration, and energy systems operations. He has received awards including the IEEE Power & Energy Society Best Paper Award (2025) and was a finalist for the INFORMS Wagner Prize (2021). Education : PhD in Machine Learning, Georgia Tech (2017–2022) B.S./M.S. in Computer Science, BUPT (2010–2017) His research emphasizes spatio-temporal data analysis , decision making under uncertainty , and applications to energy systems, healthcare, and public policy. Notable projects include optimizing police zone design (Wagner Prize finalist) and enhancing grid resilience through robust optimization. He actively collaborates with institutions like Argonne National Laboratory and NSF-funded projects. Awards : Best Paper Award, IEEE Power & Energy Society (2025) Gen-AI Fellows (2024) Finalist, INFORMS Wagner Prize (2021) Advising & Grants : Advises PhD students Zekai Fan, Wenbin Zhou, and others Recipient of Block Center Seed Grant (2024), NSF funding (2024) His work spans energy resilience, public policy optimization, and causal inference in social systems. He co-leads the INFORMS Data Mining Society and reviews for top journals like Operations Research and Management Science.

Henry ChaiView profile

Academic

• Machine Learning
• Bayesian Methods
• Probabilistic Numerics
• +3 more

Henry Chai is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). His role focuses on teaching core machine learning courses such as Introduction to Machine Learning (10-301/601) and Bayesian Methods in Machine Learning (10-424/624). He co-teaches courses with faculty like Matt Gormley and Charlie Garrod. Chai holds a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis (2021), advised by Roman Garnett. His research explores Bayesian machine learning, probabilistic numerics, and active learning, aiming to address computational challenges in reasoning about intractable quantities. He has contributed to methods like BINOCULARS and Bayesian quadrature optimization, published in top venues like ICML and AISTATS. He actively engages in pedagogical research and K-12 CS education advocacy. His teaching responsibilities include advanced graduate courses (e.g., 10-701) and undergraduate introductory courses, with a focus on scalable Gaussian processes and Bayesian optimization. Office hours are held in GHC 8133.

Kevin KellyView profile

Professor

• Ockham's Razor
• Epistemology
• Formal Learning Theory
• +7 more

Kevin Kelly is a Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University and the Director of the Center for Formal Epistemology. His work bridges formal epistemology, computational learning theory, and philosophy of science, with a focus on Ockham's razor, belief revision, and the topology of inquiry. Key Research Areas: Ockham's Razor, Epistemology, Formal Learning Theory, Modal Epistemic Logic, and Interdisciplinary Applications of Topology. Grants: John Templeton Foundation grant for research on truth-finding efficiency and scientific simplicity. Scientific Awards: John Templeton Foundation grant (2018–2021) Kelly's publications emphasize connections between probabilistic reasoning and qualitative belief, solutions to the lottery paradox, and computational models of knowledge acquisition. His recent work explores lighting design, human-centric ergonomics, and machine learning epistemology, reflecting a deep interdisciplinary engagement with technology and science.

Will TownesView profile

Assistant Professor

• Biostatistics
• Epidemiology
• Infectious Disease Forecasting
• +7 more

Will Townes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He joined CMU in 2022 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in computer science at Princeton University with Barbara Engelhardt. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in biostatistics from Harvard University under Rafael Irizarry's supervision, an M.S. in math and statistics from Georgetown, and earlier work in tropical ecology fieldwork in the Philippines. Dr. Townes specializes in applied statistics with primary focus areas in biomedical and public health domains. His research centers on wastewater-based epidemiology, wearable devices, and auxiliary signals for infectious disease tracking and forecasting as part of the Delphi research group. He has developed normalization, feature selection, and dimension reduction methods for single cell RNA-Seq and spatial transcriptomics data analysis. His broader research interests span biostatistics, epidemiology, genomics, time series forecasting, and theoretical aspects of Tweedie distributions. His recent publications reveal a strong emphasis on wastewater surveillance methodologies, single-cell data analysis techniques, and infectious disease forecasting models. The research demonstrates a consistent focus on computational scalability and efficiency through approximate inference techniques. Dr. Townes approaches statistical problems with a pragmatic perspective, comfortable with probabilistic (Bayesian) models while drawing inspiration from diverse statistical perspectives. Member of DELPHI Lab Group at CMU Active contributor to genomics and biostatistics research Focus on computational efficiency in statistical methods Dr. Townes mentors several students including Gabrielle Thivierge (PhD candidate working on infectious disease forecasting methods), Julia Elrod, and Anna Rosengart. He teaches data science courses at CMU, including a field course in Costa Rica where students work with community partners on real-world data projects involving water quality indicators, spring flow rates, and ecological monitoring.

Feras SaadView profile

Assistant Professor

• Probabilistic Programming
• Artificial Intelligence
• Programming Languages
• +4 more

Feras Saad is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, affiliated with the Principles of Programming and Artificial Intelligence groups. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2022, where his dissertations on probabilistic programming systems earned him the George M. Sprowls PhD Thesis Award and Charles & Jennifer Johnson MEng Thesis Award. His research focuses on developing scalable computing systems for probabilistic modeling and inference, integrating ideas from programming languages and probabilistic AI. Key research themes include probabilistic programming languages, automated probabilistic model discovery, statistical estimation and testing, random sampling algorithms, and applications in science and engineering. His lab explores new techniques to improve reasoning systems through automation, accuracy, and scale. Dr. Saad has published extensively in top venues including PLDI, POPL, ICML, and Nature Communications. His work spans foundational computational questions to practical software systems for probabilistic inference. Research trends show consistent focus on bridging theoretical computer science with practical applications in probabilistic modeling, with recent advances in random sampling algorithms and probabilistic programming systems. Awards and honors include: George M. Sprowls PhD Thesis Award in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making (2023) Charles & Jennifer Johnson MEng Thesis Award in Computer Science (2017) Editor's Highlight for Nature Communications paper (2024) He currently advises graduate students Gaurav Arya and Thomas Draper in the Probabilistic Computing Systems Lab. His research is supported by software libraries including GenSQL, BayesNF, and SPPL that enable practical applications across scientific domains.

Mark J. SchervishView profile

Professor

• Statistics
• Probability Theory
• Bayesian Statistics
• +3 more

Mark J. Schervish is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University . He is affiliated with Baker Hall 232F and can be reached at mark@cmu.edu . His research focuses on advanced statistical theory, probability, and Bayesian methodologies, with contributions to foundational debates in the field. He has authored influential textbooks including Probability and Statistics (2012) with Morrie DeGroot, Theory of Statistics (1995), and Rethinking the Foundations of Statistics (1999) with Jay Kadane and Teddy Seidenfeld. These works explore core principles of statistical inference, decision theory, and probabilistic modeling.

Teddy SeidenfeldView profile

Professor

• Philosophy of Statistics
• Decision Theory
• Bayesian Inference
• +5 more

Teddy Seidenfeld is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Philosophy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University , affiliated with the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences across its Department of Philosophy and Department of Statistics & Data Science . His work bridges philosophy and statistics, focusing on foundational problems involving multiple decision-makers and non-Bayesian approaches. Research Interests Coherent choice-functions under imprecise probabilities Dilation phenomena in Bayesian updating Finitely additive expectations for unbounded variables Scoring rules and probabilistic forecasts Relaxing Bayesian norms for group decision-making Collaborations with scholars like M.J. Schervish , J.B. Kadane , and Larry Wasserman underpin his contributions to understanding uncertainty, incoherence, and cooperative decision models. His research challenges strict Bayesian frameworks, particularly in collective rationality and short-run updating anomalies.

• Information Retrieval
• Recommender Systems
• Fairness and Ethics in AI
• +4 more

Fernando Diaz is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute within the School of Computer Science . His research spans Information Retrieval , Recommender Systems , and the Societal Impacts of Artificial Intelligence , with a focus on fairness, ethics, and evaluation metrics. Education : PhD in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts Amherst Research Interests include: Information Retrieval (web search, crisis informatics, search latency) Recommender Systems (multi-interest personalization, cultural content recommendation) AI Fairness (exposure fairness, data minimization, bias mitigation) Evaluation Methodology (metric robustness, contextual meta-evaluation) Human-AI Collaboration (mouse behavior analysis, preference-based evaluation) Retrieval-Augmented Generation (fair ranking, model synthesis) His recent work analyzes scaling laws , tip-of-the-tongue retrieval , and multisided fairness in AI systems. Diaz also explores the cultural implications of AI in music recommendation and content curation. Teaching : Leads courses on Search Engines and LTI Colloquium Advisees : Shaily Jagat Bhatt, Athiya Deviyani, Alfredo Gomez, Jessica Huynh, To Eun Kim