Zhao Han, Ph.D.

Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA
Dissertation: Robot Explanations: Preferences, Generation, and Communication
Committee: Holly Yanco (advisor), Reza Ahmadzadeh, Aaron Steinfeld (CMU)

M.S. Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Canada
Thesis: Delivering Scalable Frequent Pattern Mining for Non-Expert Data Miners
Advisor: Carson Leung, Lab: Database and Data Mining Lab

B.S. Computer Science (Honours, three co-op terms), University of Manitoba, Canada
Area of specializations: Software Engineering, Databases and Data Mining, HCI, Computer Graphics

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines
Mentor: Tom Williams, Lab: Mines Interactive Robotics Research (MIRROR) Lab

Adjunct Faculty^†, Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines
Course: Augmented Reality

Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Advisor: Holly Yanco, Lab: Human-Robot Interaction Lab

Teaching Assistant^†, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Marker/Teaching Assistant^†, Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Canada

Software Developer^‡, Payment Processing, iQmetrix (300+ employees), Winnipeg, Canada

App. Developer^‡, Twitter & Facebook, Blackberry (3700+ employees), Ottawa, Canada

App. Developer (Web, Co-op)^‡, Wawanesa Insurance (2700+ employees), Winnipeg, Canada

Best Long-Paper Award
2022 ACL 15th International Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG)

• Paper: Evaluating Referring Form Selection Models In Partially-Known Environments

Elected Councilor, Mathematics & Computer Sciences Division (3-year term, 7/1/2022–6/30/2025)
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)

Third Prize, Best Late Breaking Report (LBR) Award
2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

• Paper: A Task Design for Studying Referring Behaviors for Linguistic HRI

Finalist (Proposal Writer & Team Lead)
Analog Devices Real-Time Sensor Fusion Challenge, Analog Devices (ADI), FedEx, Mitsubishi Electric, SICK, SolidWorks, and MassRobotics

• Awarded $2,500 seed funding
• Led 2 members (1 undergraduate) to develop tabletop projection mapping for robot intention
• Competed with Brown University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, startups, et al.
• Led to a workshop paper and became part of my dissertation

First Place (Proposal Writer & Team Lead)
Panasonic Prototype 3D LiDAR Challenge, Panasonic, Harmonic Drive, SolidWorks, and MassRobotics

• Awarded $10,000 plus $2,500 seed funding
• Competed with Boston University, Northeastern University, et al.
• Led 2 team members (1 engineer) to develop small object detection from sparse LiDAR data
• Secured collaboration with Panasonic for the lab

Second Place (Team Description Writer & Team Lead)
FetchIt! Mobile Manipulation Challenge, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Fetch Robotics, EandM, SCHUNK, SICK, and The Construct

• Awarded $5,000 & LiDARs (led 2 team members vs. 12 in the first-placed team)
• Wrote team description paper and competed with Georgia Tech & Columbia University
• Developed autonomous manipulation and navigation on Fetch for gearbox assembly kitting
• Led to a top conference paper and formed the research platform for my dissertation

Full Teaching Assistantship, University of Massachusetts

• Awarded $23,520 and a waiver of tuition and fees of $33,132 in two years. Continued to RA.

Instructor, Augmented Reality (4^th year and graduate), Colorado School of Mines

Teaching Assistant, Artificial Intelligence (4^th year), University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Lectured on uninformed search algorithms
• Went through practical questions in class, provided answer keys for midterm exam questions

Teaching Assistant, Mobile Robotics I (4^th year), University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Graded robot demonstrations and answered questions on the KIPR Wallaby robot controller

Instructor/Teaching Assistant, Computing I Lab (1^st year), University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Led labs, answered C questions, and helped students debug

Instructor/Teaching Assistant, Computing II Lab (1^st year), University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Led labs, answered C++ questions, and helped students debug memory-related bugs
• Coordinated with a grader to grade assignments

Teaching Assistant, Software Architecture (3^rd year), University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Graded assignments written in assembly language

Marker, Object-Orientation (2^nd year), University of Manitoba

• Same as 5/2015 – 8/2015 except marked one Ruby assignment
• The instructor said: “Thanks so much for being prompt this term and a good grader.“

Teaching Assistant/Marker, Advanced Artificial Intelligence (4^th year), University of Manitoba

• Lectured: Bayesian Reasoning, Markov Chains, and Rapidly Exploring Random Trees.
• Graded assignments (written in Python, Java, C++), midterm and final exams

Instructor/Teaching Assistant, Programming Practices Lab (2^nd year), University of Manitoba

• Taught 70 students around 15 minutes in five 75-minute lab sections
• Prepared lab material from the famous Programing Pearls book (Column 2, 3, 5, 10)
• Assigned lab marks based on their Unix (OS X), C (lldb, xcode) knowledge
• Provided feedback to the instructor after lab

Marker, Databases: Concepts and Usage (3^rd year), University of Manitoba

• Provided rubrics for 100+ students‘ SQL and Relational Algebra assignments

Marker, Object-Orientation (2^nd year), University of Manitoba

• Provided timely and tailored feedback to 40 students who programmed in Java and C++

Yifei (Rena) Zhu^♀, (1^st year Ph.D. student). Comparing AR robot arm with physical robot arm.

Ruchen (Puck) Wen^♀ (3^rd year Ph.D. student, 1 paper). Research and career advice.

Fernando Sandoval Garza (1 paper). Comparing AR robot arm with physical robot arm.
Gabriel Del Castillo. Givenness Hierarchy-informed theoretic referential choice for linguistic robots.

Grace Clark^♀. Givenness Hierarchy-informed theoretic referential choice for linguistic robots.
Amia Castro^♀ (1 paper). Eye tracking implementation in augmented reality.
Albert Phan (1 paper). Comparing virtual robot arm in augmented reality with physical robot arm.
Polina Rygina (1 paper)^♀. Referring forms corpus collection for situated human-robot interaction.
Katherine Deal^♀. ––.

Aly Ranucci^♀. Category transitions between deictic and non-deictic spatial gestures.
Adam Stogsdill. ––.

Alexander Wilkinson (3 papers – 1 journal). Projection mapping for tabletop manipulation intent.
Vittoria Santoro^♀. Investigating physical replay to Fetch robot using MongoDB.
Yash Patel. Converting robot policy programmed in C++ to behavior trees.

Jenna Parrillo^♀ (3 papers). Near-table navigation. Projection mapping for navigation intent.
Daniel Giger (2 papers). Simulated robot environment. Visualize perceived & robot policies using BTs.

Gregory LeMasurier (1 paper; Started Ph.D. in 2021). Door handle manipulation and robotics simulation.
John DeNyse. Enforcing gripper constrain in probabilistic manipulation planning.
Sanskriti Sharma^♀. Extracting common code in the FetchIt mobile manipulation codebase.

Mentor workshop “Centering Equity and Inclusion in Undergraduate Research Mentoring”

Poster Presentation Judge, 2022 Undergraduate Research Symposium
Colorado School of Mines

• Rated five posters on visual organization, verbal delivery, and individual sections
• Gave feedback and encouragement to undergraduate researchers

Planning Committee Member
Front Range Industry & Postdoc Summit (FRIPS)

• Organizer

General Co-Chair
2022 AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)

• Led symposium application and discussion with 14 co-organizers on theme, topic, format, etc.

• Organizer

Co-Organizer
2022 Workshop on Affective Human-Robot Interaction, 10th International Conference on Affective Computing & Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2022)

• Organizer

Area Chair
2022 ACM International Conf. on Automotive UI and Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutomotiveUI)

Councilor, the Mathematics and Computer Sciences Division (3-year term, 7/1/2022-6/30/2025)
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)

• Design and implement of initiatives to support and promote high-quality mentored undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative inquiry
• Attend the ConnectUR conference for career development to learn, study, and master approaches to undergraduate research

Committee Member, Public Policy Subcommittee, NPA Advocacy Committee
National Postdoctoral Association

• Editorial
• Organizer

Lead Principal Co-Organizer, Special Session on Computational Advances in HRI
2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2022)

• Proposed & drafted an application explaining goal and themes of submitted papers
• Accepted to the top-tier robotics conference with five other organizers
• Attracted over 20 IROS and RA-L submissions

• Policy
• Standards

Standards Voting Member, P3107 – Standard Terminology for Human-Robot Interaction
IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA)

• Policy
• Standards

Subgroup Co-Chair & Standards Voting Member, P3108 – Recommended Practice for HRI Design of Human Subject Studies
IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA)

• Contributed topic coverage for HRI human-subjects study recommendations
• Co-chairing the subgroup 4 on Data Reporting/Release, Replicability (eight members)
• Actively participating subgroup 2 on Study Design

• Editorial
• Organizer

Guest Editor, Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI)

• Drafted special issue application and Call for Paper (CFP)
• Communicated with journal editors to announce the CFP

• Organizer

Co-Organizer, Program Co-Chair, Session Chair
2020 and 2021 AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)

• Reviewed symposium application submitted to AAAI
• Helped determine program for virtual conference: breakout rooms
• Chaired a paper session (Ethics/Trust)
• Wrote meta reviews, assigned reviewers, maintained website, publicized on Twitter

• Membership

Professional Society Member

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) — SIGCHI, SIGAI
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)
• Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
• Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)
• Research Data Alliance (RDA)
• National Postdoctoral Association (NPA)

Journal

• ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI) – ’21 (1), ’22 (2)
• IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) – ’21 (2), ’22 (2)
• Frontiers in Robotics and AI – ’22 (1)
• Applied Sciences – ’22 (1)

Conference

• ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) – ’21 (6)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) – ’18 (1), ’19 (2), ’20 (1), ’21 (1)
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) – ’22 (1)
• IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) – ’22 (2)
• ACM International Conference on Automotive UI and Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutomotiveUI) – ’22 (2)
• IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) – ’22 (1)
• ACM International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI 2022) – ’22 (1)
• ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), alt.chi – ’22 (2)
• Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) – ’22 (1)
• International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR) – ’21 (1)
• ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Short Contributions – ’21 (1)

Symposium, Workshop, and Late-Breaking Report

• AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) – ’20 (5), ’21 (4)
• ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Late-Breaking Report – ’22 (1)
• ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Late-Breaking Work – ’22 (5)
• Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), Pioneers Workshop – ’20 (2)
• IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA) – ’15 (1)

• Professional

Program Committee Member
Inclusive HRI Workshop: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community, HRI 2022

• University

Workshop Presentor, Interactive Workshop “Solidarity, Not Model Minority”
Celebration of DI&A Symposium, Colorado School of Mines

• Raised awareness of the history and harm of the Model Minority myth
• Broke the “Not Your Model Minority” film into three digestible interactive sessions with discussions
• Attracted 25+ attendees, promoting Stop Asian Hate movement as solidarity opportunity

• University

Planning Committee Member
Second Mines Community Alliances Professional Development Conference, Colorado School of Mines

• Proposed invited talks to attract the previously underrepresented faculty members, postdocs and graduate students, ensuring all university communities are welcomed at the event

• University

Founding Chair
Mines Asian Community Alliance, Colorado School of Mines

• Established the organization to foster inclusive environment for Asian staff and faculty at Mines
• Coordinated with other 4 community alliances & university president to issue 3 support statements
• Recruited members, officers as well as exclusive sponsor from university leadership team
• Created a survey on the needs and interests of the membership and the university community

• University

Founding Officer
Postdoctoral Affairs and Professional Development, Colorado School of Mines

• Promoted an inclusive environment for the underrepresented postdocs as research faculty
• Developed resources in benefits, housing, professional development, mental health, DE&I, et al.
• Helped develop website with on- & off-campus resources to support incoming & current postdocs

• University

Vice President (2017 – 2019) & Member (2016)
Chinese Students & Scholars Association, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Promoted an inclusive environment for Asian & raised awareness of Chinese culture
• Wrote, presented, and voted funding proposals with the Office of Multicultural Affairs monthly
• Coordinated and organized events for traditional Chinese & East Asian festivals (200+ attendees)
• Recruited new members, maintained website & online forum

• K-10
• Department

Lecture for 6th-10th Grade Students (1 hour)
Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines

• Explained the mathematical representation of robot arms
• Lectured the underlying math of forward and inverse kinematics to 25+ 6-10 grade students
• Presented a demo showing an JavaScript implementation in browser

• Department
• Advisory Board

Co-Presenter to External Advisory Board
Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines

• Introduced 10+ board members to the lab’s research in AR and referring form selection

• K-12

Interactive Activity Presenter
“Girls Lead the Way” Conference, Colorado School of Mines

• Introduced 30+ high school girls to math concepts & algorithms of motion planning with demo

• K-6
• STEM Fair

STEM Fair Presenter
Shelton Elementary Math & Science Night STEM Fair, Golden, CO

• Proposed & presented a robot arm activity for 50+ elementary students to control the arm with rviz
• Explained to parents about motion planning, rapidly-exploring random trees, & inverse kinematics

• K-12
• Department

Department Tour Guide
Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Presented the FetchIt collaborative mobile manipulation kitting demo
• Explained to 80+ prospective students and their parents about this lab research platform

• K-12
• University

Research Center Tour Guide
New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation (NERVE) Center, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Presented a robot-to-human handover demo (HRI’19 paper) to 50+ junior high school students

• K-12
• Judging

Judge
Botball Educational Robotics Program

• Enforced scoring rules and record scores of robot performance at competition tables

• Teacher Workshop

Technical Workshop Assistant
Botball Educator Workshops

• Answer 20+ middle school teachers’ questions on the KIPR Wallaby robot controller and C language

Invited Panelist. Explainability Panel, 2022 AAAI Spring Symposium on Closing the Assessment Loop: Communicating Proficiency and Intent in Human-Robot Teaming, Stanford, CA.

Invited Talk. “State Summarization With Behavior Trees for Explanation Generation & Communicating Causal Information of Past Actions”, ONR MURI Grant Annual Review, Virtual.

Elevator Pitch. “Application of Projection-Based Augmented Reality for Autonomous Driving,” Front Range Industry & Postdoc Summit (FRIPS), Golden, CO.

Invited Talk. “Robot Explanation Generation Using Behavior Trees”, Georgia Tech, Virtual.

Invited Talk. “Robot Explanation, AR, and Multiple Resource Theory”, Colorado School of Mines, Virtual.

Lighting Talk. “Communicating Missing Information of Robots’ Past Actions”, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) Grant Student Meeting, Virtual.

Integration Talk. Zhao Han and Michael Lee (CMU). “Using Behavior Trees to Improve Human’s Understanding of Agent Behavior”, ONR MURI Grant Annual Review, Lowell, MA.

Integration Talk and Demo. Zhao Han and Tyler Frasca (Tufts). “Going Cognitive: A Demonstration of the Utility of Task-General Cognitive Architectures for Adaptive Robotic Task Performance”, ONR MURI Grant Annual Review, Lowell, MA.

Grant Progress Talk. “Towards Explainable Robots: Realizing A Robot Explanation System, Investigating Preferred Robot Explanations”, ONR MURI Grant Annual Review, Lowell, MA.

Invited Guest Lecturer. “Ininformed Search Algorithms”, Artificial Intelligence, UMass Lowell, Lowell, MA.

Lighting Talk. “Investigating Human-Robot Handover Release Behaviors”, 2018 New England Manipulation Symposium, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Guest Lecturer. “Bayesian Reasoning”, “Markov Chains”, and “Rapidly Exploring Random Trees”, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

ROS Discourse, “ROS News for the Week of 12/13/2021 (Projecting Robot Navigation Paths)”, December 2021.

MassRobotics, “Analog Devices Sensor Fusion Challenge“, June 2020.

MassRobotics, “Panasonic Prototype 3D LiDAR Challenge“, May 2020.

ONR MURI SUCCESS Project, “Annual Review Meeting 2019“, December 2019.

ONR MURI SUCCESS Project, “Summer 2019 Hacking and Integration“, August 2019.

Inside Logistics (Canada), “Fetch rewards university team in manipulation challenge“, May 2019.

Bloomberg, The Associated Press, Robotics Tomorrow, Business Wire, “Winner of Fetch Robotics FetchIt! Challenge Executes Complex Manufacturing Tasks Using Autonomous Mobile Robotic Arm“, May 2019.

Today’s Medical Developments, “Fetch Robotics FetchIt! Mobile Manipulation Challenge winners“, May 2019.

Software Developer, iQmetrix, Winnipeg, Canada

• Involved in designing and implementing payment gateway API by integrating multiple payment providers (e.g., Avalon, Chase), consumed by retail management applications connected to POS machines
• Communicated with payment providers, such as Avalon, to clarify issues that existed in their payment gateway documentation
• Introduced the concept of aspect-oriented programming and reduced boilerplate code (cross-cutting concerns) for each API endpoint
• Mastered Scrum process with daily meetings, sprint planning, and story sizing
• Used C#, Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server (Agile project management, revision control, and code review)

Blackberry Software Developer, Research in Motion, Ottawa, Canada

• Worked on Twitter & Blackberry Messenger apps on Blackberry OS)
• Designed and implemented Model and Controller for compose screen. Collaborated with another co-op student who was working on UI.
• Investigated Push SDK on BBOS for registration & messages.
• Practiced multi-threaded programming to achieve faster list loading featured with auto more loading and list image loading.
• Prioritized and fixed defects, worked with the server team to clarify API issues.
• Involved in the Scrum process with daily meetings, sprint planning, and story sizing.
• Collaborated with SV&V (Software Verification & Validation) team to verify fixes.
• Used Java, Eclipse, Rally (Agile Project Management), Perforce (Revision Control), Code Collaborator (Code Review), MKS Integrity (Defect Tracking), and Jenkins (Continuous Integration).

Application Developer (Co-op), Wawanesa Insurance, Winnipeg, Canada

• Assigned to design and develop an AJAX-based web application on top of existing insurance broker web application, allowing insurance business people to manage files and content for insurance broker portal
• Contributed to a 12-people scrum team who rewrote and enhanced an insurance broker portal web application
• Collaborated with BA (Business Analyst) to help gather and clarify business requirements and document them on SharePoint, Web Designer to help make user interface decisions, other developers to deliver shippable product increments on spring basis, and QA (Quality Assurance) to fix defects reported on a bug tracking web appl – JIRA
• Reported status update and provided feedback in a daily Scrum stand-up meeting
• Used Java, Eclipse, JQuery, HTML, CSS, Struts 2 (web framework), Apache Jackrabbit (Database), Subversion (Revision Control), Spring framework (Inversion of Control), Hibernate(Object Relational Mapping), and Selenium (Browser Automation)