Zhao Han, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida

4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620, USA zhaohan@usf.edu zhaohanphd.com 12/12/2024

Also available in PDF

Research Interests

Mission: Develop capable robotic systems and understandable robot interactions with humans

Areas: Human-robot interaction (HRI), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI)

Expertise: Robot explanation/transparency, projector-based/head-worn AR, mobile manipulation, references, robot failures, assistive robotics, handovers, robot competition, behavior trees, robot ethics, workload, teleoperation

Education

2016–⁠2021

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

2014–⁠⁠⁠2016

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

2009–2013

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

Employment

8/2023→

Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida
Lab: Reality, Autonomy, and Robot Experience (RARE) Lab

8/2021–7/2023

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

Projects:

  • Givenness Hierarchy Theoretic Natural Language Generation for Situated HRI
    • Collaborators: Neil T. Dantam, Hao Zhang
  • Augmented Reality and Physio-Enhanced Robotic Gesture (APERTURE)
    • Collaborators: Leanne Hirshfield (Psychology), Christopher D. Wickens (Psychology)

8/2022–12/2022

Adjunct Faculty, Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines

5/2018–4/2021

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

Projects:

9/2016–4/2018

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

5/2015–4/2016

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

5/2013–8/2013

Software Developer, Payment Processing, iQmetrix (350+ employees), Winnipeg, Canada

9/2012–12/2012

App. Developer, Twitter & Facebook, Blackberry (3500+ employees), Ottawa, Canada

1/2012–4/2012

App. Developer (Web, Co-op), Wawanesa Insurance (3000+ employees), Winnipeg, Canada

Teaching Experience is described in its own section.
Non-academia employment is detailed in the Industry Experience section.

Honors and Awards

5/2024

Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research Award – Faculty
University of South Florida

8/2023

Mines Diversity, Inclusion & Access (DI&A) Award to Mines Asian Community Alliance, Outstanding Campus Engagement
Colorado School of Mines

3/2023

Best Late Breaking Report (LBR) Nominee (top 5%, 7/139)
2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

8/2022

Mines Diversity, Inclusion & Access (DI&A) Award, Creating a Culture of Inclusion (Faculty)
Colorado School of Mines

  • Founded Mines Asian Community Alliance to foster an inclusive environment and sense of belonging
  • Centralized resources for the postdoc community as a founding officer of the postdoc program

7/2022

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

4/2022

Elected Councilor (7/2022–6/2025), Mathematical, Computing, and Statistical Sciences Division (MCS)
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)

3/2022

Third Prize, Best Late Breaking Report (LBR) Award (top 3%, 3/103)
2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

6/2020

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 in seed funding
  • Led 2 members (1 undergraduate) to develop tabletop projection mapping for robot intention
  • Competed with Brown University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and startups.

5/2020

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, Olin College
  • Led 2 team members (1 engineer) to develop small object detection from sparse LiDAR data

5/2019

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. 10+ in the first-placed team)
  • Competed with Georgia Tech & Columbia University
  • Developed autonomous manipulation and navigation on Fetch for gearbox assembly kitting

Honors and Awards to Students

4/2024

Adrian Lozada, Accepted Participant, CRA-WP Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU)

1/2024

Hong Wang, 2024 CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women

1/2024

Uthman Tijani, 2024 CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills (IDEALS)

Grants

Research Grants

2024–2027

Center for Innovation, Technology and Aging
Source: University of South Florida
Investigators: Yu Sun, William Haley, Tammy Allen, and Hariom Yadav
Role: Investigator (among 37 faculty members from seven colleges)
Amount: $1,000,000

1/2024–7/2024

NSF I-Corps Site Subgrant
Source: NSF’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Site at the University of South Florida
Investigator: Zhao Han (PI)
Amount: $3,000

1/2024–5/2024

Faculty Undergraduate Research Mentorship Grant
Source: University of South Florida
Investigator: Zhao Han (PI)
Amount: $2,200

2019–2020

Human-Aware Projection Mapping for Robot Intention
ADI Real-Time Sensor Fusion Challenge, MassRobotics
Source: Analog Devices (ADI), MassRobotics, FedEx, Mitsubishi Electric, SICK, and SolidWorks
Investigators: Zhao Han (PI), Holly Yanco (Faculty Advisor), Alexander Wilkinson, Jordan Allspaw
Amount: $2,500

2019–2020

Detecting and Removing Small Ground Object Hazards with 3D LiDAR on a Mobile Manipulator
Panasonic Prototype 3D LiDAR Challenge, MassRobotics
Source: Panasonic, Harmonic Drive, SolidWorks, and MassRobotics
Investigators: Zhao Han (PI), Holly Yanco (Faculty Advisor), Jordan Allspaw, Brian Flynn
Amount: $12,500

2018–2019

Mobile Multi-Task Manipulation in a Confined and Integrated Environment with Irregular Objects
FetchIt! Mobile Manipulation Challenge, 2019 IEEE Int’l Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
Source: Fetch Robotics, EandM, SCHUNK, SICK, and The Construct
Investigators: Zhao Han (PI), Holly Yanco (Faculty Advisor), Jordan Allspaw
Amount: $5,000

Other Grants

1/2023

DI&A Community Grant for MACA 2023 Lunar New Year Celebration
Source: Colorado School of Mines, Diversity, Inclusion and Access (DI&A)
Awardee: Mines Asian Community Alliance (MACA)
Amount: $1,000

2021–2022

Open Access Pilot Mini-Grant
Source: Colorado School of Mines, Arthur Lakes Library
Investigators: Zhao Han (PI), Tom Williams (Faculty Advisor)
Amount: $750

Professional Development for Grant Writers

9/28/2022

Promoting DI&A and Creating Broader Impacts Plans for NSF Proposals
Research and Technology Transfer, Colorado School of Mines

6/2/2022

NSF Webinar: Sunset of the National Robotics Initiative: Guidance for Researchers

3/23/2022

NSF Webinar: Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems Program

2/25/2022

NSF Webinar: Future Manufacturing

2/15/2022

NSF National Robotics Initiative (NRI) 3.0 Office Hours

2/4/2022

NSF CAREER Proposal Writing Intro Panel
Research and Technology Transfer, Colorado School of Mines

Publications

Refereed Journals

  1. Zhao Han, Holly A. Yanco. “Communicating Missing Causal Information to Explain a Robot’s Past Behavior.” ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 12(1), 2023. Top HRI journal.

  2. Landon Brown*, Jared Hamilton*, Zhao Han*, Albert Phan*, Thao Phung*, Eric Hansen, Nhan Tran, and Tom Williams. “Best of Both Worlds? Combining Different Forms of Mixed Reality Deictic Gestures.” ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 12(1), 2023. *Equal contribution. Top HRI Journal.

  3. Zhao Han, Elizabeth Phillips (GMU, Psychology), and Holly Yanco. “The Need for Verbal Robot Explanations and How People Would Like a Robot to Explain Itself.” ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 10(4), 2021. Top HRI journal.

  4. Alexander Wilkinson, Michael Gonzales, Patrick Hoey, David Kontak, Dian Wang, Noah Torname, Amelia Sinclaire, Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Robert Platt, and Holly Yanco. “Design guidelines for human–robot interaction with assistive robot manipulation systems.” Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 12(1), 2021. Open access.

  5. Zhao Han, Daniel Giger, Jordan Allspaw, Michael S. Lee (CMU), Henny Admoni (CMU), and Holly A. Yanco. “Building The Foundation of Robot Explanation Generation Using Behavior Trees.” ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 10(3), 2021. Invited talk at Georgia Tech. Top HRI journal.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

  1. Adrian Lozada, Uthman Tijani, Villa Keth, Hong Wang, and Zhao Han. “Anywhere Projected AR for Robot Communication: A Mid-Air Fog Screen-Robot System,” 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2025. Top HRI conference. 25% acceptance rate.

  2. Gregory LeMasurier, Alvika Gautam, Zhao Han, Jacob Crandall, and Holly Yanco. “Reactive or Proactive? How Robots Should Explain Failures,” 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024. Top HRI conference. 24.9% acceptance rate.

  3. Annie Huang*, Alyson Ranucci*, Adam Stogsdill*, Grace Clark, Keenan Schott, Mark Higger, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams. “(Gestures Vaguely): The Effects of Robots’ Use of Abstract Pointing Gestures in Large-Scale Environments,” 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024. *Equal contribution. Top HRI conference. 24.9% acceptance rate.

  4. Uthman Tijani, Hong Wang, and Zhao Han. “Towards Reproducible Language-Based HRI Experiments: Open-Sourcing a Generalized Experiment Project,” 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2024. Top HRI conference. 61.3% acceptance rate (short contribution).

  5. Gabriel Del Castillo*, Grace Clark*, Zhao Han*, and Tom Williams. “Exploring the Naturalness of Cognitive Status-Informed Referring Form Selection Models,” The 16th International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG), 2023. *Equal contribution. Top NLG conference.

  6. Zhao Han and Tom Williams. “Evaluating Cognitive Status-Informed Referring Form Selection for Human-Robot Interactions,” 2023 Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci), 2023. Top Cognitive Science conference. 43.4% acceptance rate (380/875).

  7. Zhao Han*, Yifei Zhu*, Albert Phan, Fernando Sandoval Garza, Amia Castro, and Tom Williams. “Crossing Reality: Comparing Physical and Virtual Robot Deixis,” 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2023. *Equal contribution. Top HRI conference. 25.2% acceptance rate.

  8. Ruchen Wen, Alyssa Hanson, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams. “Fresh Start: Encouraging Politeness in Wakeword-Driven Human-Robot Interaction,” 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2023. Top HRI conference. 25.2% acceptance rate.

  9. Kevin Spevak*, Zhao Han*, Tom Williams, and Neil T. Dantam. “Givenness Hierarchy Informed Optimal Document Planning for Situated Human-Robot Interaction,” 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2022. *Equal contribution. Top Robotics conference. 48% acceptance rate (1,740/3,579).

  10. Zhao Han, Polina Rygina and Tom Williams. “Evaluating Referring Form Selection Models in Partially-Known Environments,” The 15th International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG), 2022. Top NLG conference. Best Long-Paper Award.

  11. Zhao Han, Jenna Parrillo, Alexander Wilkinson, Holly A. Yanco, and Tom Williams. “Projecting Robot Navigation Paths: Hardware and Software for Projected AR,” 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Short Contributions (Open Science – Code Sharing), 2022. Top HRI conference. 24% acceptance rate.

  12. Ruchen Wen, Zhao Han and Tom Williams. “Teacher, Teammate, Subordinate, Friend: Generating Norm Violation Responses Grounded in Role-based Relational Norms,” 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2022. Top HRI conference. 24% acceptance rate.

  13. Zhao Han, Adam Norton, Eric McCann, Lisa Baraniecki, Will Ober, Dave Shane, Anna Skinner, and Holly A. Yanco. “Investigation of Multiple Resource Theory Design Principles on Robot Teleoperation and Workload Management.” 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021. Top Robotics conference. 49% acceptance rate (1,946/4,005).

  14. Tyler Frasca* (Tufts), Zhao Han*, Jordan Allspaw, Holly Yanco, and Matthias Scheutz (Tufts). “Going Cognitive: A Demonstration of the Utility of Task-General Cognitive Architecture for Adaptive Robotic Task Performance.” 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020. *Equal contribution. Top Robotics conference. 47% acceptance rate (1,409/2,996).

  15. Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Gregory LeMasurier, Jenna Parrillo, Daniel Giger, S. Reza Ahmadzadeh, and Holly A. Yanco. “Towards Mobile Multi-Task Manipulation in a Confined and Integrated Environment with Irregular Objects.” 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2020. Top Robotics conference. 42% acceptance rate (1,483/3,512).

  16. Zhao Han and Holly Yanco. “The Effects of Proactive Release Behaviors During Human-Robot Handovers.” 2019 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2019. Top HRI conference. 28% acceptance rate.

  17. Patrick M. J. Dubois, Zhao Han, Fan Jiang, and Carson K. Leung. “An Interactive Circular Visual Analytic Tool for Visualization of Web Data.” IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI), 2016.

  18. Zhao Han and Carson K. Leung. “FIMaaS: Scalable Frequent Itemset Mining-as-a-Service on Cloud for Non-Expert Miners.” International Conference on Big Data Applications and Services (BigDAS), ACM, 2015.

  19. Alfredo Cuzzocrea, Zhao Han, Fan Jiang, Carson K. Leung, and Hao Zhang. “Edge-based Mining of Frequent Subgraphs from Graph Streams.” Procedia Computer Science 60, special issue of KES 2015, 2015.

Refereed Workshop Papers and Extended Abstracts

  1. Xiangfei Kong and Zhao Han. “Do Results in Experiments with Virtual Robots in Augmented Reality Transfer To Physical Robots? An Experiment Design.” 4th Workshop YOUR Study Design! Participatory critique and refinement of human-robot interaction user studies (WYSD ’24), 2024.

  2. Hong Wang, Tam Do, and Zhao Han. “To Understand Indicators of Robots’ Vision Capabilities.” 2024 International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2024 (VAM-HRI), 2024.

  3. Hong Wang, Tam Do, and Zhao Han. “Designing Indicators to Show a Robot’s Physical Vision Capability.” The 31st IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (IEEE VRW), 2024.

  4. Jiaee Cheong, Nikhil Churamani, Luke Guerdan, Tabitha Edith Lee, Zhao Han, and Hatice Gunes. “Causal-HRI: Causal Learning for Human-Robot Interaction.” 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2024.

  5. Raj Korpan*, Amy Eguchi, Zhao Han, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Sindhu Ravindranath, and Ana Tanevska. “3rd Workshop on Inclusive HRI: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community.” 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2024.

  6. Rafael Sousa Silva, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams. “The Importance of Memory for Language-Capable Robots.” XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students, 30(1), 2023.

  7. Mark Higger, Polina Rygina, Logan Daigler, Lara Ferreira Bezerra, Zhao Han, and Tom Williams. “Toward Open-World Human-Robot Interaction: What Types of Gestures Are Used in Task-Based Open-World Referential Communication?The 27th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SEMDIAL), 2023.

  8. Ana Tanevska, Shruti Chandra, Giulia Barbareschi, Amy Eguchi, Zhao Han, Raj Korpan, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Giulia Perugia, Sindhu Ravindranath, Katie Seaborn, and Katie Winkle. “Inclusive HRI II: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community.” 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop Abstract, 2023.

  9. Shelly Bagchi, Patrick Holthaus, Gloria Beraldo, Emmanuel Senft, Daniel Hernández García, Zhao Han, Suresh Kumaar Jayaraman, Alessandra Rossi, Connor Esterwood, Antonio Andriella, and Paul Pridham. “Towards Improved Replicability of Human Studies in Human-Robot Interaction: Recommendations for Formalized Reporting.” 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Late-Breaking Report (LBR), 2023. Best Late Breaking Report (LBR) Nominee.

  10. Zhao Han, Tom Williams, and Holly A. Yanco. “Mixed-Reality Robot Behavior Replay: A System Implementation.” 2022 AAAI Fall Symposium on The Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2022.

  11. Zhao Han and Tom Williams. “Towards Formalizing HRI Data Collection Processes.” The 4th Annual Workshop on Novel and Emerging Test Methods & Metrics for Effective HRI at HRI 2022, 2022.

  12. Zhao Han*, Albert Phan*, Amia Castro*, Fernando Sandoval Garza*, and Tom Williams. “Towards an Understanding of Physical vs Virtual Robot Appendage Design.” 2022 International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2022 (VAM-HRI), 2022. * Equal contribution

  13. Gregory LeMasurier, Alvika Gautam (BYU), Zhao Han, Jacob W. Crandall (BYU), and Holly A. Yanco. ““Why Didn’t I Do It?” A Study Design to Evaluate Robot Explanations.” HRI 2022 Workshop YOUR study design! Participatory critique and refinement of participants’ studies, 2022.

  14. Zhao Han, Boyoung Kim (GMU, Psychology), Holly A. Yanco, and Tom Williams. “Causal Robot Communication Inspired by Observational Learning Insights.” 2022 AAAI Spring Symposium on Closing the Assessment Loop: Communicating Proficiency and Intent in Human-Robot Teaming, 2022.

  15. Zhao Han and Tom Williams. “A Task Design for Studying Referring Behaviors for Linguistic HRI.” 2022 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Late-Breaking Report (LBR), 2022. Third Prize, Best Late Breaking Report (LBR) Award (3/103).

  16. Zhao Han, Alexander Wilkinson, Jenna Parrillo, Jordan Allspaw, and Holly A. Yanco. “Projection Mapping Implementation: Enabling Direct Externalization of Perception Results and Action Intent to Improve Robot Explainability.” 2020 AAAI Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2020. Full-length talk. Open science – code.

  17. Zhao Han and Holly A. Yanco. “Reasons People Want Explanations After Unrecoverable Pre-Handover Failures.” 2020 IEEE ICRA Workshop on Human-Robot Handovers, 2020. Handover community engagement.

  18. Zhao Han, Jordan Allspaw, Adam Norton, and Holly Yanco. “Towards A Robot Explanation System: A Survey and Our Approach to State Summarization, Storage and Querying, and Human Interface.” 2019 AAAI Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI), 2019. Full paper, 8 pages.

Theses

  1. Zhao Han. “Robot Explanations: Preferences, Generation, and Communication”. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA. 2021.

  2. Zhao Han. “Delivering Scalable Frequent Pattern Mining for Non-Expert Data Miners”. M.S. Thesis, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. 2016.

Other Publications

  1. Jivko Sinapov, Zhao Han, Shelly Bagchi, Muneeb Ahmad, Matteo Leonetti, Ross Mead, Reuth Mirsky, and Emmanuel Senft. “Introduction to the Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI).” ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI), 13(3), 2024.

  2. Zhao Han, Emmanuel Senft, Muneeb I. Ahmad, Shelly Bagchi, Amir Yazdani, Jason R. Wilson, Boyoung Kim, Ruchen Wen, Justin W. Hart, Daniel Hernández García, Matteo Leonetti, Ross Mead, Reuth Mirsky, Ahalya Prabhakar, Megan L. Zimmerman. “Proceedings of the AI-HRI Symposium at AAAI-FSS 2022.” 2022.

  3. Reuth Mirsky, Megan Zimmerman, Muneed Ahmad, Shelly Bagchi, Felix Gervits, Zhao Han, Justin Hart, Daniel Hernández García, Matteo Leonetti, Ross Mead, Emmanuel Senft, Jivko Sinapov, Jason Wilson. “Proceedings of the AI-HRI Symposium at AAAI-FSS 2021.” 2021.

  4. Shelly Bagchi, Jason R. Wilson, Muneeb I. Ahmad, Christian Dondrup, Zhao Han, Justin W. Hart, Matteo Leonetti, Katrin Lohan, Ross Mead, Emmanuel Senft, Jivko Sinapov, and Megan L. Zimmerman. “Proceedings of the AI-HRI Symposium at AAAI-FSS 2020.” 2020.

  5. Zhao Han and Holly Yanco. “Investigating Human-Robot Handover Release Behaviors.” 2018 New England Manipulation Symposium, 2018. Poster.

Teaching

Courses Taught

1/2025–
4/2025

Software Engineering (undergraduate, TBD students), University of South Florida

8/2024–
12/2024

Augmented Reality (4th year and graduate, 28 students), University of South Florida

1/2024–
4/2024

Software Engineering (undergraduate, 38 students), University of South Florida

  • Redesigned course material: Slides, assessments, technical topic presentations, and final projects

8/2023–
12/2023

Augmented Reality (graduate, 60 students), University of South Florida

  • Achieved an average rating of 4.4/5.0 in course evaluation
  • Successfully taught a large class with 60 mostly international M.S. students

8/2022–
12/2022

Augmented Reality (4th year and graduate, 30 students), Colorado School of Mines

  • Achieved an average rating of 4.7/5.0 in course evaluation
  • Designed course description and developed learning outcomes for essential knowledge and skills
  • Developed homework to better assess learning outcomes
  • Developed evaluation and experiment design course material

Courses Assisted

9/2018–
12/2018

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

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

1/2018–
4/2018

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

9/2017–
12/2017

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

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

1/2017–
5/2017

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

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

9/2016–
12/2016

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

  • Graded assignments written in assembly language

1/2016–
4/2016

Marker, Object-Orientation (2nd 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 (4th year), University of Manitoba

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

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

9/2015–
12/2015

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

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

5/2015–
8/2015

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

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

Teaching Professional Development

11/8/2024

Workshop on Using Student Feedback to Improve Your Course
Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), University of South Florida

8/2023–11/2023

CITL and ODEI Book Club
Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), University of South Florida

8/2023–11/2023

Small Tweaks, Large Impact
Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), University of South Florida

  • Learned six science-based strategies to enhance learning: Retrieval, Practicing, Interleaving, Self- Explaining, Learning Through Practicing, and Learning Through Connecting.

9/2022–
12/2022

Course: Foundations of Course Design
Trefny Innovative Instruction Center, Colorado School of Mines

  • Synthesize your course vision, purpose, relevance, and key impacts in a course description
  • Develop course learning outcomes consistent with course key impacts and course description
  • Plan summative assessments that align with CLOs
  • Outline Pathways to Mastery that support students in mastering the learning outcomes

Mentoring

Graduate Students (University of South Florida)

10/2023→

Xiangfei Kong (M.S. student). AR virtual vs. physical robot experiment results.

8/2023→

Hong Wang (Ph.D. student). Indicating a robot’s physical vision capability.

8/2023→

Uthman Tijani (Ph.D. student). In-air projection for robot communication.

Thesis Committee Member

10/2024

Tianze Chen, Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida
Major Professor: Yu Sun
Title: Robotic Multi-Object Grasping from a Pile: Techniques and Algorithms for Enhanced Dexterity

7/2024

Felipe Fronchetti, Ph.D. in Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University
Major Professor: Rodrigo Spínola
Title: Exploring End-User Environments for the Control and Programming of Collaborative Robots

3/2024

Kejvi Cupa, M.S. in Computer Science, University of South Florida
Major Professor: Yu Sun
Title: Automatic Image-Based Nutritional Calculator App

Undergraduate Researchers (University of South Florida)

10/2024→

Chi Vo. Using robots to improve college students’ mental health.

10/2024→

Jonathan Wong. Explainable robots by design with AR.

9/2024→

Felix Mendez. Using robots to improve college students’ mental health.

9/2024→

Maria Julia Vidal. Indicating robot’s vision capability.

8/2024-10/2024

Dev Thakkar. AR virtual vs. physical robot experiment results.

7/2024→

James Yab. AR virtual vs. physical robot experiment results.

5/2024→

Ridhima Phatak. Robot’s physical vision capability indicator.

5/2024-8/2024

Villa Keth. In-air projection for robot communication.

4/2024-8/2024

James Ocampo. Implementing robot’s physical vision indicator.

1/2024-9/2024

Duy Linh (Liam) Ha. Using robots to improve college students’ mental health.

1/2024→

Adrian Lozada. In-air projection for robot communication.

11/2023→

Tam (Tammy) Do. Using robots to improve college students’ mental health.

Graduate Students (Colorado School of Mines)

3/2023-
7/2023

Daniel (Danny) Hammer (Ph.D. student, 1st year). Evaluation of cognitive status-informed document planner.

8/2022-
12/2022

Mark Higger (1st year M.S. student. Transitioned to Ph.D. in 2023. 1 paper). Gesturing in referring form selection.

5/2022-
3/2023

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

8/2021-
4/2023

Ruchen (Puck) Wen (Ph.D. student, 3rd year to graduate). Research and career advice.

Undergraduate Researchers (Colorado School of Mines)

4/2023-
7/2023

Aaron Fanganello. Evaluation of Cognitive Status-Informed Document Planner.

10/2022-
3/2023

Keenan Schott (1 paper). Comparing deictic and non-deictic spatial gestures.

8/2022-
7/2023

Annie Huang (1 paper). Comparing deictic and non-deictic spatial gestures.

8/2022-
12/2022

Aly Ranucci (1 paper). Comparing deictic and non-deictic gestures.
Sander Schott. Gesturing in referring form selection.
Nelson Valencia. ––.
Gazi Md Iftakher Morshed. ––.

11/2021-
4/2023

Gabriel Del Castillo (1 paper). Givenness Hierarchy-informed theoretic referential choice for linguistic robots.

8/2021–
7/2022

Fernando Sandoval Garza (2 papers). Comparing AR robot arm with physical robot arm.

8/2021–
5/2022

Grace Clark (2 papers). Givenness Hierarchy-informed theoretic referential choice for linguistic robots.
Amia Castro (2 papers). Eye tracking implementation in augmented reality.
Albert Phan (2 papers). Comparing virtual robot arm in augmented reality with physical robot arm.
Polina Rygina (2 papers). Referring forms corpus collection for situated human-robot interaction.
Katherine Deal. ––.

8/2021–
12/2021

Aly Ranucci. Category transitions between deictic and non-deictic spatial gestures.

2020

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.

5/2019–
7/2021

Jenna Parrillo (3 papers). Near-table navigation. Projection mapping for navigation intent.
Daniel Giger (2 papers). Robot simulation. Visualize perceived & learned policies using behavior tree.

2019

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.

Undergraduate Researchers (UMass Lowell)

2020

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.

5/2019–
7/2021

Jenna Parrillo (3 papers). Near-table navigation. Projection mapping for navigation intent.
Daniel Giger (2 papers). Robot simulation. Visualize perceived & learned policies using behavior tree.

2019

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.

Mentoring Service and Professional Development

11/2022-
12/2022

Program Committee Member
AAAI 2023 Undergraduate Consortium

10/28/2022

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

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

10/26/2022

Workshop, “Mentorship: The Key to Success in the Academic Workspace”

4/18/2022

Workshop: “Centering Equity and Inclusion in Undergraduate Research Mentoring.”

4/18/2022

Poster Presentation Judge, 2022 Spring 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

Professional Service and Leadership

10/2024→

  • Program Committee

Program Committee (PC) Member (Main Track, Studies Theme)
2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

  • Recruiting 21 expert reviewers, writing 7 meta-reviews and 7 grand-reviews

6/2024

  • Organizer

Co-Organizer
2024 Workshop on Affective Human-Robot Interaction, 12th International Conference on Affective Computing & Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2024)

  • Helped advertise call for paper, attracted 7 submissions and reviewed 2 papers

6/2024

  • Program Committee

Associate Editor for Late-breaking reports
2024 33rd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)

  • Recruited 10 reviewers for five manuscripts with two for each
  • Meta-reviewed five manuscripts by summarizing reviews

5/2024

Proposal Review Panelist, Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR)
National Science Foundation (NSF)

  • Reviewed 3 grant proposals with 15-page descriptions
  • Attended 2-day panel meeting discussing 9 proposals with program officer and reviewers

9/2023-3/2024

  • Organizer

Co-Organizer, Workshop on “Causal-HRI: Causal Learning for Human-Robot Interaction,” 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

10/2023–
11/2023

  • Program Committee

Program Committee (PC) Member (Main Track, Studies Theme)
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

  • Attended 2.5-day in-person meeting discussing over 40 papers with 6 top HRI researchers
  • Recruited 7 expert reviewers, meta-reviewed 4 papers, and grand-reviewed 5 papers

8/2023→

  • Editorial

Guest Editor, Special Issue on Human-mediated Robot Autonomy
International Journal of Social Robotics

7/2023-
10/2023

  • Program Committee
  • Organizer

Diversity and Inclusion Chair, Program Committee (PC) Member
2023 AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI)

  • Secured 5 complimentary registrations to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Meta-reviewed 3 submissions and discussed them during PC meeting

6/2023→

  • Editorial

Lead Topic Editor, Perceiving, Generating, and Interpreting Affect in HRI
Frontiers in Robotics and AI

  • Co-drafted research topic proposal with a list of 118 potential authors

6/2023-3/2024

  • Organization

Publications Co-Chair
2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

2/2023–9/2023

  • Organizer

Co-Organizer
2023 Workshop on Affective Human-Robot Interaction, 11th International Conference on Affective Computing & Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2023)

  • Co-drafted workshop proposal
  • Initiated a special issue (special topic collection) with Frontiers in Robotics and AI
  • Advertised CFP in multiple mailing lists
  • Hosted the workshop in person (5 keynote speakers and 8 authors)

9/2022–
11/2022

  • Program Committee

Program Committee (PC) Member (Main Track, Technical Theme → Studies Theme)
2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

  • Attended 3-day PC meeting discussing over 40 papers with 13 top HRI researchers
  • Recruited 16 expert reviewers, meta-reviewed 5 papers, and grand-reviewed 4 papers

10/2022

  • Organization

Session Co-Chair, Special Session: Computational Advances in Human-Robot Interaction 1
2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

4/2022–
11/2022

  • 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.
  • Promoted diversity by initiating DEI Chair negotiating five complimentary registrations
  • Initiated a Blue Sky Ideas track and attracted over 20 submissions
  • Co-led PC meeting and hosted the 2.5-day hybrid symposium in Washington, D.C., USA

3/2022–
10/2022

  • Organizer

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

  • Attracted 10 submissions and participated in all aspects of workshop organization
  • Contacted and invited one of the speakers and hosted the early morning session

4/2022–
6/2022

  • Program Committee

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

  • Recruited multiple reviewers for manuscripts in autonomous vehicles

4/2022→

  • Education

Elected Councilor (7/2022–6/2025), Mathematical, Computing, & Statistical Sciences Division
Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR)

  • Design and implement 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

2/2022–
10/2022

  • 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 and expanded two special sessions
  • Led to two papers nominated as IROS best paper awards, one per session

1/2022→

  • Policy
  • Standards

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

12/2021→

  • 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 subgroup 4 on Data Reporting/Release, Replicability (eight members)

12/2021-6/2024

  • 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
  • Sought and assigned reviewers for submitted manuscripts
  • Attracted 18 submissions and wrote two meta reviews

4/2020–
11/2021

  • 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

2019→

  • Membership

Professional Society Member

Manuscript Referee Service

Journal

  • ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI) – ’21 (1), ’22 (2), ’23 (1), ’24 (3)
  • IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) – ’21 (2), ’22 (2), ’23 (1)
  • Frontiers in Robotics and AI – ’22 (1)
  • IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (TNSRE) -’23 (1)

Conference

HRI, Robotics, AI

  • ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) – ’22 (6), ’23 (9), ’24 (9)
  • IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) – ’18 (1), ’19 (2), ’20 (1), ’21 (1), ’23 (2)
  • IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) – ’22 (1), ’23 (1)
  • IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) – ’22 (2)
  • Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) (RSS) – ’24 (2)
  • ACM International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI) – ’22 (1), ’23 (2)
  • International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR) – ’21 (1)
  • ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Short Contributions – ’21 (1), ’23 (1)
  • AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence – ’23 (1)

HCI, AR/VR, Cognitive Science

  • ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) – ’23 (1), ’24 (4)
  • ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), alt.chi – ’22 (2), ’23 (1)
  • IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) – ’22 (1)
  • IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) – ’23 (2), ’24 (1)
  • ACM International Conference on Automotive UI and Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutomotiveUI) – ’22 (2)
  • Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) – ’22 (1), ’23 (2), ’24 (2)

Symposium, Workshop, and Late-Breaking Report

  • AAAI Fall Symposium on Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction (AI-HRI) – ’20 (5), ’21 (4), ’22 (2)
  • 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)
  • International Conference on Affective Computing & Intelligent Interaction (ACII), Late-Breaking Work – ’23 (1)
  • Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), Pioneers Workshop – ’20 (2)
  • IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA) – ’15 (1)

Institutional Service and Leadership

Spring 2024

Spring Induction to the Profession Ceremony
College of Engineering, University of South Florida

Fall 2023

Graduate Admissions Committee Member
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida

  • Contributed revision of Ph.D. program admission in catalog

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Service and Leadership

9/2023-3/2024

  • Professional

Co-Organizer
3rd Workshop on Inclusive HRI: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community, HRI 2024

8/2023→

  • University

Faculty Advisor
Chinese Students and Scholars Association, University of South Florida

11/2022-
3/2023

  • Professional

Co-Organizer
Inclusive HRI II: Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community, HRI 2023

  • Co-authored the workshop application for the 2023 edition
  • Hosted a morning paper session with six papers
  • Attracted 11 submissions and participated in all aspects of workshop organization

8/2022-
10/2022

  • Regional
  • Postdoc

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

  • Approached sponsors and secured one corporate sponsor
  • Recruited Robotics companies to attract Computer Science and Engineering postdocs

3/2022

  • Professional

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

3/2022-8/2023

  • National
  • Postdoc

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

  • Helping to improve postdoc policies in NSF documents
  • Advocating improving benefits and increasing salary range of postdocs

2/15/2022

  • University

Workshop Presenter, 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

1/2022-
10/2022

  • 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

11/2021-
5/2023

  • 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

10/2021-6/2023

  • University
  • Postdoc

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

9/2016–
9/2019

  • University

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

  • Promoted an inclusive environment for Asians & raised awareness of Chinese culture
  • Wrote, presented, and voted on 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

Outreach and Engagement

6/27/2023

  • K-12

Interactive Workshop Presenter
Summer Multicultural Engineering Training (SUMMET) program, Colorado School of Mines

  • Introduced robot kinematics to 30+ high-schoolers, including underrepresented/first-generation

10/12/2022

  • Department

Co-Presenter to Toyota Research Institute
Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines

  • Introduced 20 Toyota Research Institute employees to the lab’s research in referring form selection

6/24/2022

  • K-10
  • Department

Lecturer for 6-10th 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

5/17/2022

  • 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

2/26/2022

  • 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

11/16/2021

  • 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

10/27/2019

  • 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

8/9/2018

  • 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

4/28/2018

  • K-12
  • Judging

Judge
Botball Educational Robotics Program

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

1/17/2018–
1/18/2018

  • Teacher Workshop

Technical Workshop Assistant
Botball Educator Workshops

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

Miscellaneous

2011

Contributor, Translator, KDE UserBase Wiki

2009-10

Photographer, The Manitoban Newspaper (University student newspaper)

6/2009

Organizer Assistant, Manitoba Marathon

Talks

Excluding presentations of papers listed in the publications section above

12/2024

Invited Talk, ““R for Robot”–From HCI to HRI: Enabling Robots to Explain with Augmented Reality,” Human-Computer Interaction class, Tampa, FL.

3/2024

Invited Talk, “Enabling Robot Explainability with AR,” 7th International Workshop on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed-Reality for Human-Robot Interactions at HRI 2024, Boulder, CO.

1/2024

Invited Talk, “Embodied Intelligence and Collaborative Robotics,” DFW Chinese IT Association (DFWITA), Dallas, TX. (Online)

12/2023

Invited Talk. “Evaluating AI in Physical World and Coping Failures,” AI Seminar, Tampa, FL.

10/2023

Invited Talk. “Independent Living Through Assistive Manipulation,” Research Opportunities in AgeTech, Tampa, FL.

5/2023

Invited Talk. “Bridging The Gap Between Robots and Humans Through Explainability,” IEEE Denver, University of Denver, Denver, CO.

4/2023

Invited Participant. NSF-funded “Workshop on Dialogue with Robots,” University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.

3/2023

Invited Talk. “Bridging The Gap Between Robots and Humans Through Explainability,” University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD.

3/2023

Invited Talk. “Bridging The Gap Between Robots and Humans Through Explainability,” University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), Dallas, TX.

2/2023

Invited Talk. “Bridging The Gap Between Robots and Humans Through Explainability,” University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

1/2023

Invited Talk. “Bridging The Gap Between Robots and Humans Through Explainability,” UC Merced, Merced, CA.

3/2022

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

11/2021

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

10/2021

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

5/2021

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

4/2021

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

2/2021

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

8/2020

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.

8/2020

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.

11/2019

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

9/2018

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

6/2018

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

2/2016

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

Media Exposure

2021

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

2020

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

2020

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

2019

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

2019

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

2019

UMass Lowell, “UML 125 Years Proud“, August, 2019

2019

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

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.

2019

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

Industry Experience

5/2013–
8/2013

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)

9/2012–
12/2012

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).

1/2012–
4/2012

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

  • Assigned to design and develop an AJAX-based web application in an insurance broker 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 the insurance broker portal
  • 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 updates 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)

Technical Background

GitHub: github.com/umhan35/

Programming

Databases

Tools

References

  1. Dr. Tom Williams (Postdoc Advisor)
    Associate Professor of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO
    E-mail: twilliams@mines.edu, office phone: (303) 273-3820
  2. Dr. Holly Yanco (Ph.D. Advisor)
    Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science, NERVE Center Director, UMass Lowell, Lowell, MA
    E-mail: holly_yanco@uml.edu, office phone: (978) 934-3642

  3. Dr. Aaron Steinfeld (Carnegie Mellon University)
    Research Professor, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
    E-mail: steinfeld@cmu.edu, office phone: (412) 268-6346

  4. Dr. Reza Ahmadzadeh
    Assistant Professor of Computer Science, UMass Lowell, Lowell, MA
    E-mail: reza_ahmadzadeh@uml.edu, office phone: (978) 934-6175

  5. Dr. Elizabeth Phillips (George Mason University)
    Assistant Professor of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
    E-mail: ephill3@gmu.edu, office phone: (703) 993-1384