I’m a roboticist specializing in human-robot interaction. In 2017, I co-founded Diligent Robotics as CTO to create a future powered by robots that work seamlessly with humans.

I am honored to have been recognized in various forms: inclusion on Fortune magazine’s “40 under 40”, FAST COMPANY’s 2022 and 2021 “Queer 50”, MIT Tech Review’s 2019 list of “35 InnovatORS Under 35”, and winning the Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Award at ICRA 2013. In 2018, I completed my PhD in Robotics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, co-advised by Dr. Andrea L. Thomaz and Dr. Sonia Chernova. 

I received my M.S.E. degree in Robotics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, where I worked in Dr. Katherine J. Kuchenbecker’s Haptics Research Group in the GRASP Lab. Between 2009-2011, I worked on natural language processing (NLP) and intelligent information integration at IBM Research, Almaden. I graduated with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009. I've also enjoyed stints at Google[X], a lab that aims for technological moonshots, and Honda Research Institute.

My research interests include socially intelligent robots, interactive multi-sensory perception, NLP, and applying machine learning techniques for robotic learning in unstructured environments. With Diligent Robotics, I am thrilled to apply my research to a problem worth solving.