Gita Reese Sukthankar

Gita Reese Sukthankar is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida (UCF), where she directs the Intelligent Agents Lab. Her research focuses on activity and plan recognition, with applications in multi-agent systems, robotics, and human-robot interaction. She earned her Ph.D. from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and joined UCF in fall 2007.

Research Interests:
Her work spans activity recognition, intent inference, multi-agent coordination, and human-robot teams. She has applied these techniques to domains such as adversarial games (e.g., military simulations, Unreal Tournament), assistive technologies, and cooperative robotics. Her research integrates AI, machine learning, and probabilistic models to understand and predict complex team behaviors.

Publication Trends:
Her publications emphasize spatio-temporal modeling, probabilistic graphical models (e.g., HMMs, CRFs), and multi-agent plan recognition. She frequently publishes in top venues like AAMAS, AAAI, and ICRA, with a focus on robust recognition of team behaviors, transfer learning, and real-world AI applications.

Scientific Awards:

• NSF CAREER Award (2009)
• AFOSR Young Investigator (2009)
• ONR Summer Faculty Fellow (2008)
• UCF Faculty Excellence for Doctoral Mentoring (2012)
• CECS Dean's Research Professorship (2013)
• AAAI Senior Member (2021)
• ACM and IEEE Senior Member

Advising and Grants:
She mentors graduate students in AI and robotics and has led research funded by DARPA, AFOSR, and ONR. Her lab develops systems for intelligent agents that can understand and collaborate with humans. She has served on numerous program committees and editorial boards, including ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems.
She teaches courses such as Intelligent Systems, Robotics, and Machine Learning, and has been recognized for both research and teaching excellence.

Labs and Teams:
She leads the Intelligent Agents Lab at UCF, which focuses on data-driven social informatics and AI for human-agent teams. Her group collaborates with researchers in robotics, computer vision, and cognitive science to build adaptive, intelligent systems.