Samin Yasar

Samin Yasar is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computer Science at Rice University, working under Professors Lydia Kavraki, Vaibhav Unhelkar, and Vicente Ordonez. His research focuses on enabling robots to collaborate effectively with humans, emphasizing human intent understanding, motion prediction, and closed-loop decision-making systems. He holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Virginia (2024) and a BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BRAC University (2015).

Research Interests:

• Robotics
• Human-Robot Interaction
• Representation Learning
• Generative Models
• Machine Learning

Awards:

• UVA Endowed Fellow (2023-2024)
• UVA Distinguished Mentor Award (2023, 2024)
• HRI Pioneer Award (2022)
• Double Hoo Award (University of Virginia, 2022)
• DSN Travel Grant (2020)
• ISMR Travel Grant (2019)

Experience:

• Research Intern at Microsoft (2024)
• Graduate Research Assistant, Collaborative Robotics Lab (University of Virginia, 2020-2024)
• Graduate Research Assistant, Dependable Systems and Analytics Lab (University of Virginia, 2017-2019)
• Assistant Manager at MGH Group (Bangladesh, 2015-2017)

Grants & Funding:

• Recipient of multiple travel grants for top-tier robotics and AI conferences
• Contributor to projects funded by NSF and industry collaborations

Labs/Teams:

• Collaborative Robotics Lab (Rice University)
• Dependable Systems and Analytics Lab (University of Virginia)