Leadership Team Profiles
Takeo Kanade –Director
Takeo Kanade is the U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer
Science and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon. He received his doctoral degree in electrical
engineering from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1974. After holding a faculty position at
the Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, he joined Carnegie Mellon in
1980, where he was the director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001.
Professor Kanade has worked in multiple areas of robotics: computer vision, multimedia,
manipulators, autonomous ground and air mobile robots, and sensors. He has written
more than 300 technical papers and reports in these areas, as well as more than 20
patents. He has been the principal investigator of more than a dozen major vision and
robotics projects at Carnegie Mellon. Professor Kanade has been elected to the
National Academy of Engineering. He is a fellow of the IEEE, the ACM, and American
Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the former and founding editor of
International Journal of Computer Vision. The awards he received include the C&C
Award, Joseph Engelberger Award , Allen Newell Research Excellence Award, JARA
Award, Funai Accomplishment Award, and Marr Prize. Professor Kanade has served for
government, industry, and university advisory or consultant committees, including
Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) of National Research Council,
NASA's Advanced Technology Advisory Committee, and PITAC Panel for Transforming
Healthcare Panel.
Daniel P. Siewiorek – Acting Director;
QoLT Systems Leader, Virtual Coach.
Daniel P. Siewiorek is the Buhl University Professor of Computer Science and Electrical
and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon, where he helped to initiate and guide
the Cm* project that culminated in an operational 50-processor multiprocessor system.
He has been involved with the design of nine multiprocessor systems and has been a
key contributor to the dependability design of over two dozen commercial computing
systems. Professor Siewiorek leads an interdisciplinary team that has designed and
constructed 20 generations of mobile computing systems. He has served as a
consultant to several commercial and government organizations, while serving on six
technology advisory committees. Professor Siewiorek has also written eight textbooks in
the areas of parallel processing, computer architecture, reliable computing and design
automation in addition to over 400 papers. Elected an IEEE Fellow in 1981, for
contributions to the design of modular computing systems, he was awarded the
Frederick Emmons Terman Award by the American Society for Engineering Education in
1983 for outstanding young electrical engineering educator and received the IEEE
Computer Society and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Eckert-Mauchly
Award in 1988 for his outstanding contributions in parallel computer architecture,
reliability and computer architecture education. He is a member of the 1994 inaugural
class of ACM Fellows and elected to the 2000 class of the National Academy of
Engineering. He has served as Associate editor of the Computer System Department of
the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, as chairman of the
IEEE Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Computing and as founding chairman of
the IEEE Technical Committee on Wearable Information Systems. Currently director of
the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, he was previously director of the Engineering
Design Research Center and co-founder of its successor organization, the Institute for
Complex Engineered Systems, where he served as associate director. He is a member
of IEEE, ACM, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and Sigma Xi. Professor Siewiorek
received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, in 1968, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering (minor in
Computer Science) from Stanford University, in 1969 and 1972, respectively.
Rory Cooper - Co-Director
Rory A. Cooper, Ph.D., received his B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering
from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 1985 and 1986,
respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering with
a concentration in bioengineering from University of California at Santa Barbara in 1989.
He is FISA & Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) chair, Distinguished Professor in
the Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology, and Professor of
Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a
professor in the departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Orthopaedic
Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health System. Professor Cooper
is director and VA Senior Research Career Scientist of the Center for Wheelchairs and
Associated Rehabilitation Engineering, a VA Rehabilitation Research and Development
Center of Excellence.
Kate Seelman – Research Director, Socioeconomics
Katherine D. Seelman is associate dean and professor of rehabilitation science and
technology at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of
Pittsburgh. She served as director of the National Institute on Disability and
Rehabilitation Research in the Clinton Administration. Professor Seelman has been
involved in science, technology and public policy throughout her career as a researcher,
policy analyst and administrator of programs and projects. She has received many
awards and is widely published.
Howard D. Wactlar –Research Director, Technology (Emeritis)
Howard D. Wactlar is Vice Provost for Research Computing and Associate Dean at the
School of Computer Science, and Alumni Research Professor of Computer Science at
Carnegie Mellon. He has been vice provost at Carnegie Mellon since 1979, serving in
various research, technical and administrative capacities. He received his professional
degrees in physics from the University of Maryland and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He was primary architect and remains project director of the Informedia
Digital Video Library project, one of the initial U.S. Digital Library Initiative projects,
and is the principal investigator for the NSF-funded Digital Human Memory Machine
and CareMedia projects. He was a co-founder and associate director of the DoDfunded Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and director of the joint Carnegie
Mellon/IBM Information Technology Center. He holds basic patents for processes related
to automated video library creation, and video search and summarization, and is coinventor of a pending patent for automated video capture and analysis of human
behavior. He co-founded MediaSite, organized to commercialize video information
extraction and search technology. He has been active in establishing video information
research programs in the U.S., Europe, and China through joint initiatives with multiple
foreign partners. His current research centers on multimedia information systems,
machine learning, and intelligent systems and their application to improving health care.
Jim Osborn - Executive Director
Jim "Oz" Osborn is Executive Director of the Medical Robotics Technology Center at
Carnegie Mellon, as well as MERITS of Pittsburgh, a program to stimulate
collaborations between clinical and technological researchers. He is also the coordinator
of University Life Science Initiatives for Carnegie Mellon. Previously, he founded a
regional economic development group, the Pittsburgh Robotics Initiative. From 1985
through 1999, he held research and management positions in Carnegie Mellon's
Robotics Institute and led several multi-$M robotics R&D projects sponsored by the US
DOE, NASA, and industry, including the first robot to explore an active volcano and
robots for investigation of the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear accidents. He
has served as a board member of several professional society robotics divisions,
chaired two technical conferences, and authored 25 papers and technical reports on
robotic systems and applications. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical and
biomedical engineering and a master's degree in civil and biomedical engineering, both
from Carnegie Mellon. A lifelong Pittsburgher, he lives with his wife and two daughters
in Oakmont, Pa.
Curt Stone – QoLT Foundry Director &
Industrial Liaison
Curt Stone is an Executive in Residence at CMU and the Director of the QoLT
Foundry and Industry Liaison. In his role with QoLT Foundry he is identifying,
evaluating and advancing technology for near term commercial opportunities. He is a
highly inventive, seasoned medical device industry entrepreneur with 25 years
experience in finance, product development, business development, strategic
relationships, marketing and sales. Prior to joining CMU he founded a company that
developed and commercialized a medical device from technology he invented. He has
successfully launched more than a dozen new medical device products, and has been
awarded several patents for innovations. He has served as an integral member of
executive management teams for several early stage and medium sized companies,
specializing in strategic development, marketing and product development for domestic
and international markets.
Martial Hebert – Research Area
Leader - Perception & Awareness
Martial Hebert is a professor at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. His
interests include computer vision, especially object recognition, scene understanding, and
video analysis, processing of 3-D data for building 3-D models, recognizing objects,
and for autonomous navigation, and perception for autonomous mobile systems. His
current projects include the development of techniques for recognizing image categories
in images, for detecting common events in video sequences, and for building 3-D
representation of dynamic environments for unmanned mobile systems.
Christopher Atkeson -
Research Area Leader – Mobility & Manipulation
Chris Atkeson’s research focuses on numerical approaches to machine learning, and
uses humanoid robotics and assistive environments as domains in which to explore the
behavior of learning algorithms. Current work includes model-based learning, task-level
learning, memory-based learning, learning from observation, reinforcement learning, and
learning strategies. While at Georgia Tech he helped found the Aware Home project,
and at Carnegie Mellon University he participates in the CareMedia project and the
STAR project (Simultaneous Tracking and Activity Recognition).
Jodi Forlizzi – Research Area Leader, Human Systems Integration
Jodi Forlizzi is an assistant professor of design and human-computer interaction at
Carnegie Mellon. She is an interaction designer contributing to design theory and
practice. Her theoretical research examines theories of experience and emotion as they
relate to interaction design. Other research and practice centers on notification systems
ranging from peripheral displays to social robots, with a special focus on the social
aspects of these systems.
Rich Schulz – Research Area
Leader, Person and Society
Richard Schulz is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the University Center for
Social and Urban Research at the University of Pittsburgh. He has spent most of his
career doing research and writing on adult development and aging. Much of his
research has focused on the effects of disabling late life illnesses on patients and their
families. This body of work is reflected in publications, which have appeared in major
medical, psychology and aging journals. As principal investigator of more than two
dozen NIH-funded studies, Professor Schulz has become one of the nation's leading
contributors to research on the psychosocial consequences of disability. In recognition of
his contributions to research on aging, he was the year 2000 recipient of the
Kleemeier Award from the Gerontological Society of America, and the 2003 recipient of
the Developmental Health Award for Research on Health in Later Life from the
American Psychological Association.
Aaron Steinfeld - QoLT Systems Leader: Safe Driving
Aaron is a systems scientist in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. He earned
his Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. in industrial & operations engineering from the University of
Michigan (1999, 1994 and 1993, respectively) and completed a postdoctoral position
at the University of California, Berkeley (2000). His research interests are the
application and evaluation of constrained interfaces and operator assistance,
predominantly in the realms of human-robot interaction, rehabilitation, transportation and
intelligent systems.
Dan Ding
- QoLT Systems Leader: Home and Community Health and Wellness
Education Co-Director
Dan Ding , Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation
Science and Technology (RST) at the University of Pittsburgh. She conducted research
in rehabilitation engineering and coordinates the RST graduate program and recruitment
efforts. She holds a Ph.D. degree in mechanical and automation engineering from the
Chinese University of Hong Kong and received her postdoctoral training in rehabilitation
engineering. She mentors engineering undergraduate interns on projects encompassing
assistive device design and instrumentation. She also advises graduate students in the
RST program and serves on graduate thesis/dissertation committees. She has
(co)authored more than 35 peer-reviewed papers and served as expert reviewer for
federal grants, peer-reviewed journals and conferences in the field of robotics and
rehabilitation engineering. She was the recipient of the NIDRR Switzer Fellowship and
the PVA Research Fellowship. Professor Ding is a member of RESNA and IEEE.
Reid Gordon Simmons – Education Co-Chair
Reid Gordon Simmons is a research professor in the School of Computer Science and
the associate director for education in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. He
earned his B.A. degree in 1979 in computer science from SUNY at Buffalo and his
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 1983 and 1988, respectively, in the field of
artificial intelligence. Since coming to Carnegie Mellon in 1988, Professor Simmons'
research has focused on developing self-reliant robots that can autonomously operate
over extended periods of time in unknown, unstructured environments. This work
involves issues of robot control architectures that combine deliberative and reactive
control, probabilistic planning and reasoning, monitoring and fault detection, and robust
indoor and outdoor navigation. More recently, Professor Simmons has focused on the
areas of human-robot social interaction, coordination of multiple heterogeneous robots
and formal verification of autonomous systems. Over the years, he has been involved
in the development of over a dozen autonomous robots, including the social robots
Grace and Valerie. Professor Simmons has published over 150 papers and articles in
the areas of robotics and artificial intelligence. He won the Newell Research Award in
2004 and was part of the Remote Agent team that won the 1999 NASA Software of
the Year Award.
Mary Goldberg
- Education and Outreach Coordinator
Mary is excited to assume her responsibilities as Education and Outreach Coordinator
for the Engineering Research Center for Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) and the
University of Pittsburgh Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology. Mary is
responsible for the facilitation of the REU (research experience for undergraduates)
and RET (research experience for teachers) and all other education and outreach
seminars, conferences, and programs occurring within QoLT. Originating from eastern
Pennsylvania, Mary came to the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a dual BS in
Psychology and Spanish. Afterwards, while working as a graduate student assistant at
the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid at Pitt, Mary completed her M.Ed. in
Higher Education Management, also from the University of Pittsburgh. An avid traveler,
Mary enjoys visiting interesting places and studied abroad for a semester in Seville,
Spain.
Kristen Sabol – Communications & Media Director
Kristen Sabol is the Director of Communications and Media for the Quality of Life
Technology Center (QoLT). Her communications experience spans public relations,
journalism, marketing and web content development efforts for technology-based startups and Fortune 500 corporations. Kristen maintains a strong passion for
interdisciplinary efforts that bring potential for widespread social changes. Her early
career focused on grassroots advocacy and media campaigning for transformative
technologies such as infant screening for genetic disorders and wireless networking. She
was a member of Ketchum's Global Technology Practice and has written extensively for
the Pittsburgh Technology Council's T.E.Q. Magazine. As a web application developer
for Duquesne University, Kristen helped launch its e-services portal and content
management system (CMS) initiatives. She joined Guru.com in 2008 to create
optimized content and social media-based tools that raise awareness to online
freelancing as an entrepreneurial paradigm shift in the workplace. Kristen holds a M.A.
in Literary and Cultural Theory from SUNY Buffalo with research emphasis in
cyberculture theory and digital poetics. She has studied abroad at Oxford University
and earned a B.A. in English from Ursinus College.