You can find my full CV here.

I was born in Braila, Romania and got my B.Sc. in Computer Science from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, after which I went to Carnegie Mellon for my PhD in Robotics. I am now an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley. Highlights of my activities and awards are below.

Alumni


Former InterACT lab members and their current whereabouts:
  • Graduate students: Dorsa Sadigh (tenure-track at Stanford), Jaime Fisac (tenure-track at Princeton), Sandy Huang (research scientist at DeepMind), and Dylan Hadfield-Menell (about to be tenure-track at MIT).
  • Undergraduate students: Micah Caroll (now PhD at Berkeley), Gokul Swamy (now PhD at CMU), Ravi Panya (now PhD at CMU), Hong Jun Jeon (CRA finalist, now PhD at Stanford), Nick Landolfi (now PhD at Stanford), Allan Zhou (now PhD at Stanford), Andy Palaniappan (now PhD at Stanford), Dhruv Malik (still at Berkeley), Jason Zhang (now PhD at CMU), Minae Kwon (now PhD at Stanford), Lawrence Chan (now PhD at Berkeley), S. Milli (CRA finalist, now PhD at Berkeley), Glen Chao (now PhD at U. Michigan), Rachel Holladay (now PhD at MIT), Kenton Lee (PhD from UW)

Outreach


  • I founded the AI4ALL BAIR Camp at UC Berkeley, a summer camp on human-centered AI for high school students from low income backgrounds. The camp is in its 5th year, bringing 23-25 students to the Berkeley campus for a week. This is a partnership with AI4ALL and Lawerence Hall of Science.
  • In general, I enjoy teaching K-12 students about AI and its interaction with humans, and inspiring them to love math. I give guest lectures, host summer interns, and collaborate with teachers from local schools. If you're a Bay Area teacher and would like to get involved, please do get in touch!
  • I make a point to speak at women in tech event and to guest lecture in CS classes so that students get more exposed to female CS faculty.

Selected Honors and Awards


Selected Professional Activities


  • Program Co-Chair, Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2018
  • Steering Committee, Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR).
  • Co-PI, Center for Human-Compatible AI
  • Chair, Bay Area Robotics Symposium (BARS) 2016, 2017.
  • Workshop Chair, RSS 2016.
  • Area chair / associate editor for THRI, AURO (special issue), ICRA, IROS, HRI.