Matthias Scheutz, Ph.D. Ph.D.

Karol Family Applied Technology Professor

Director, Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory

Matthias Scheutz received a PhD degree in philosophy from the University of Vienna and a joint Ph.D. in cognitive science and computer science from Indiana University. He is the Karol Family Applied Technology Professor of computer and cognitive science in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University in the School of Engineering, and Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory and the HRI Masters and PhD programs. He has over 400 peer-reviewed publications in artificial intelligence, artificial life, agent-based computing, natural language understanding, cognitive modeling, robotics, human-robot interaction and foundations of cognitive science. His current research focuses on complex ethical cognitive robots with natural language interaction, problem-solving, and instruction-based learning capabilities in open worlds.

Vasanth Sarathy, Ph.D.

Research Assistant Professor

Vasanth Sarathy received a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Tufts University, an M.S. in EECS from M.I.T., and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law. Before Tufts, he was a Senior Researcher at Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT) where he worked closely with the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community to solve cutting-edge AI challenges. His current research combines neural and symbolic approaches to make generative AI systems more creative and inventive while staying within the bounds of human socio-cultural norms. He also loves to draw single-panel cartoons. Visit vsarathy.com to learn more about his current projects.

Evan Krause, MS

Senior Robotics Researcher, Lab Manager

Evan Krause received a MS degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Washington. He is a senior staff member in the HRI Lab and his current research interests include failure detection and recovery, problem solving, and architecture development for robots in open worlds.

Marlow Fawn

Research Engineer

Marlow Fawn received their B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Tufts in 2019, with a minor in computer science. They have been affiliated with the HRI lab since then, and hope to continue their studies in the fields of AI, cognitive architecture, and embodied systems.

Christopher Thierauf, MS

Ph.D. Student

Chris Thierauf is currently pursuing a joint PhD in Computer Science and Human-Robot Interaction after completing a bachelors in computer science in 2020. His research work focuses on resiliency in open worlds: by designing systems that use knowledge and reasoning to understand failure and invent solutions, robots can better handle the chaos of human environments.

Sarah Schneider, MS

Ph.D. Student

Sarah Schneider received a Bachelor and Master degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Technical University Graz and she is currently doing her PhD in Computer Science at Tufts University. Her research focuses on novelty detection and description in computer vision tasks by incorporating semantic information.

Mitchell Abrams, MS

Ph.D. Student

Mitchell Abrams received his BA from Binghamton University in Linguistics and an MS in computational linguistics from Georgetown University. His former work in linguistics and natural language processing has touched on a broad range of topics, which include leveraging abstract meaning representation (AMR) for human-robot communication, creating annotated corpus resources for the Coptic language, and analyzing corpora within the forensic context. Mitchell has developed his skills at the US Army Research Laboratory and the Aston Institute of Forensic Linguistics (UK), where he was a visiting researcher. His current research in the human-robot interaction laboratory focuses on natural language understanding, reference resolution, and social norms.

Ayca Aygun, MS

Ph.D. Student

Ayca Aygun is a Ph.D. student in the department of Computer Science. She received a B.S. degree in mathematical engineering and an M.S. degree in biomedical engineering from Istanbul Technical University, and an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University. She worked as a software and systems engineer for more than seven years. Her ongoing research focuses on offline and real-time cognitive state and team state prediction by exploring various physiological signal types including human gaze, EEG, and ECG with the help of different learning methodologies and statistical techniques.

Pierrick Lorang, MSc

Ph.D. Student

Pierrick Lorang holds a MSc in General Engineering - speciality Mechanics - from the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC - Sorbonne Alliance). He has a background in various fields including mechanical engineering, robotics, computer science, nanotechnology and aerospace engineering. He is pursuing a joint PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Human-Robot Interaction at Tufts University in collaboration with the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Vienna. His research focuses on problem solving, search, planning and acting in an open world. He is currently working on methods for online search and learning in partially known environments to improve the robustness of systems to all kinds of changes in the environment.

Helen Lu

Ph.D. Student

Helen Lu received her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her master's degree in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the joint Computer Science and Human-Robot Interaction program at Tufts University. Her research interests include neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence and human-in-the-loop machine learning. Her current research focuses on enabling robots to collaborate with humans on creative tasks through incorporating generative AI into the robots’ symbolic cognitive architectures.

Emily Ertle

Ph.D. Student

Emily Ertle received B.S. degrees in Neuroscience and Computer Science from the University of Vermont in 2024. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the department of Computer Science. Through collaboration with the HRI lab and the Levin Lab, she hopes to build new computational frameworks for exploring complex biological phenomena. She is particularly interested in understanding decision-making in unconventional intelligences, such as a collective of cells forming specific patterns in morphogenesis, and the methods by which biological systems maximize the number of functions performed by the same hardware.

Katharine (Katie) Kowalyshyn

Ph.D. Student

Katharine (Katie) Kowalyshyn is currently a joint PhD student at Tufts studying HRI and Computer Science. Before joining the lab, she completed her bachelor's degree at Davidson College in Computer Science and German Studies. Her research investigates the potential uses, risks, and biases of large language models, including for planning and team-based tasks, as well as multilingualism in generative models. When she's not in the lab, Katie can be found taking photos around the Boston area of just about any and everything.

Timothy Duggan

Ph.D. Student

Tim is a Joint Computer Science and Human Robot Interaction PhD student. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Material Science & Engineering as well as an Master of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering, both from Cornell University. Tim worked on robotics research grants as a Robotics Software Engineer at Otherlab for about five years. Tim’s current research interest is Vision-Language-Action models.

Daniel Little

Ph.D. Student

Daniel is a CS graduate student interested in reinforcement learning.