Bio

I am an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Southern California. I received a PhD from the CMU Robotics Institute (Dec. 2017) and a MS from MIT. I lived for four years in Japan, where I studied at The University of Tokyo (M.Eng.) and worked as a researcher at Square Enix. I have also worked as a research associate at the University of Washington, Computer Science & Engineering Department and as a research specialist at MIT. I did my undergraduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA).

You can download my CV here. This is my Google Scholar page.

Press

Our work on robotic hair brushing was highlight at the Fortune.

Our work on learning via adversarial human games was highlighted at the Wired and at the Daily Mail.

Our work on automated dining was highlighted at the IEEE Spectrum and at the IEEE The Institute.

Our work on learning human types from demonstrations from HRI 2015 was highlighted at the Harvard Business Review and the KurzweilAI.

Our work on human-robot cross-training from HRI 2013 was highlighted at the MIT News, the Discovery News, the New York Times, the ACM Tech News, the New Scientist and the Inc.

Awards

I was nominated for the Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award in IROS 2019, received the Best Enabling Technologies Award at HRI 2015, was nominated for the same award at HRI 2018 and was nominated for the Best Paper Award at the International Symposium of Robotics (ISR) 2013.

I received the CMU Gordon-Bell, MIT Dupont, MIT Marie-Vergottis and Onassis Foundation Fellowships and the Propondis Foundation Honorary Scholarship. I also received the Monbukagakusho (Japanese Government) Scholarship for my studies in Japan.

Invited Talk in the HRI Pioneers 2013 Workshop (2 out of 57 applicants)

Third Place in Japan-Open Robocup Competition in Osaka, four-legged league, 2007

Demos

We presented a demo of our robotic hair brushing capability in NeurIPS 2019.

 

We made this fun feeding demo for Thanksgiving 2019!

I lead the development of a robot enabled dining scenario in the Personal Robotics Lab (left). I had the chance to present the demo to Secretary Clinton (right).

I contributed to the development of a demo, where HERB, our home exploring robotic butler, completes a YCB task of sorting colored blocks. We presented the demo to the Carnegie Science Center.

 

I contributed to the development of a demo, where a remote operator performs manipulation tasks through a Virtual Reality interface. I had the chance to present the demo to the Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. David Hahn.