Alyssa Pierson

Alyssa Pierson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University, with affiliations in Robotics & Autonomous Systems and Systems Engineering. She leads the Collaborative Autonomy Group and serves as Chief Scientist at Ava Robotics. Her research focuses on trust, cooperation, and distributed control in multi-agent systems, emphasizing socially-compliant and autonomous robotic systems interacting in dynamic environments.

Education:

• PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Boston University (2017)
• BS in Engineering, Harvey Mudd College

Research Interests: Multi-agent systems, distributed robotics control, socially-compliant autonomous systems, and human-robot interaction. Her work addresses challenges in cooperative teaming, trust modeling, and safe navigation in complex environments.

Key Awards:

• NSF Career Award (2023)
• MassRobotics Rising Star in Robotics Medal (2023)
• Clare Booth Luce Fellowship

Grants & Projects: Recipient of NSF CAREER Award for 'Decentralized and Online Planning for Emergent Cooperation in Multi-Robot Teams'. Active in projects like heterogeneous teaming and privacy-aware trajectory planning.

Labs & Affiliations: Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Autonomy Group. Affiliated with BU's Intelligent, Autonomous & Secure Systems division and the Hariri Institute for Computing.