Who am I?
I recently graduated with a PhD in Machine Learning and Robotics from the University of Leeds, UK. My research interest covers machine learning and planning for autonomous agents. I also teach graduate courses in robotics and AI. My work focuses on designing learning algorithms for robots to acquire transferable and generalizable manipulation skills without jeopardizing the safety of the environment.

What keeps me awake at night?
Imagine trying to reach for the salt shaker from the back of a cluttered and occluded shelf. A task that may seem intuitive for us, humans, and even animals, remains a frontier research question that is yet to be solved. The robot must have a commonsense understanding of the physics (how objects interact, the temporal correlation between observation history and actions, etc.), and a real-time reactive behaviour to address real-world conditions while pertaining to the semantic goal of the task.

What can I do about it?
I am leading multiple research projects pioneering solutions for robots to learn new skills through active interaction with the environment. These projects span the fields of Computer Vision, deep Imitation and Reinforcement Learning, Dynamical Systems, and Motion Planning. With this, I pursue the vision of progressively augmenting the capabilities of robots to operate autonomously and safely in human environments.