Bruno Castro da Silva is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from UMass Amherst (2014), and MSc and BSc degrees from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. Prior to UMass, he was an Associate Professor at UFRGS and a postdoctoral researcher at MIT's Aerospace Controls Laboratory. His research focuses on reinforcement learning (RL), robotics, and AI safety, aiming to develop algorithms that ensure safe and autonomous task decomposition while meeting user-specified safety criteria. Key areas include hierarchical policies, active learning, and biologically-plausible mechanisms. He has published in top venues like ICML, NeurIPS, and Science, and received awards such as the Best Paper at RLDM 2022 and Distinguished Reviewer distinctions. He teaches courses in reinforcement learning and machine learning at UMass, emphasizing accessibility and safety. His work also extends to fostering diversity in STEM education. He leads the Autonomous Learning Laboratory and collaborates with organizations like Adobe Research and the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience in Rome.
