Curriculum Vitae EDUCATION Monica N. Nicolescu Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science University of Nevada, Reno monica@cs.unr.edu http://www.cs.unr.edu/ monica June 1998 - May 2003: University of Southern California Ph.D., Computer Science Thesis: An Action-Embedded Framework for Robot Learning from Demonstration Dissertation Advisor: Prof. Maja J Matarić June 1998 - December 1999: University of Southern California M.S., Computer Science October 1995 - July 1996: Polytechnic University Bucharest (Romania) M.S., Computer Science Thesis : Fuzzy Control Advisor: Prof. Dumitru Popescu October 1990 - June 1995: Polytechnic University Bucharest (Romania) B.S., Computer Science Thesis: Modeling Identification and Compensation for Friction in Mechanical Drives, at the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (INPG), FRANCE Advisor: Prof. Dorin Carstoiu PROFESSIONAL July 2003 - Present: University of Nevada, Reno Assistant Professor: Performing teaching and research activities in the areas of autonomous mobile robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and human-robot interaction. June 1998 - May 2003: University of Southern California, Robotics Laboratory Research Assistant: Performed research in autonomous mobile robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and human-robot interaction. February 1996 - May 1998: Omnis Group Ltd. (Bucharest, Romania) Software Engineer: Development of intelligent software systems for business management. October 1995 - February 1996: Research Institute for Informatics, Bucharest, Romania) Research Assistant: Performed research on expert systems for medical applications. TEACHING Spring 1994: Polytechnic University Bucharest (Romania) Enrolled in a pedagogy class, performed teaching training, and received a Diploma in Pedagogy. Fall 2003: University of Nevada, Reno CS 465, 665 - Analysis of Algorithms.
2 AWARDS & HONORS Best Paper Award, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS-36 (2003) USC Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) award (2002) Upsilon Pi Epsilon International Honor Society for the Computing Sciences (2002) DARPA/NSF Study on Human-Robot Interaction (invitation-only workshop) travel award (2001) USC Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) award (2001) Autonomous Agents Conference travel award (2000) USC Academic Achievements Award, (1999) Eighth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition, Third Place on Hors d oeuvres anyone? and Special Award for innovative Robot-Human Interface in the Challenge event (as member of the USC Robotics Lab team) (1999) Scholarship, the First European Agent Systems Summer School, Utrecht, The Netherlands (1999) Seventh Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition, Second Place on Find Life on Mars Single Agent Non-Manipulator category (as member of the USC Robotics Lab team) (1998) TEMPUS Scholarship at the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, FRANCE (Feb 1995 - Aug 1996) Romanian Governmental Merit-Based Fellowship (1990-1995, 1995-1996) SERVICE ORGANIZING COMMITTEES Conference Session Co-Chair (with Simon X. Yang), Learning Session, IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation (IEEE CIRA 2001), Banff, Alberta, CANADA, July 29 - August 1, 2001. JUDGING Friendly Robotics competition at the Boys and Girls Club of Hollywood, June 9, 2000. REVIEWING Journals: Adaptive Behavior Autonomous Robots IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (Special Issue on Human-Robot Interaction) Conferences: American Association for Artificial Intelligence National Conference (AAAI) American Association for Artificial Intelligence Fall Symposium International Conference on Autonomous Agents IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation (CIRA) IEEE/RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB) International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS)
3 MEMBERSHIPS AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence) MEDIA COVERAGE ABC Evening News (on Channel ABC 7), by Miriam Hernandez, featured videos of robot teaching by demonstration experiments, aired June 27, 2001. USC Engineer Magazine, The Robot Revolution article, Vol.1, Issue 2, 2002. The New York Times, Making Robots More Like Us, by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, March 6, 2003. USC Trojan Family Magazine, Robotica, by Mark Ewing, Eric Mankin, Bob Calverley, Vol. 35, Number 2, Summer 2003. PUBLICATIONS REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Learning and Interacting in Human-Robot Domains, Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans, Vol. 31, No. 5, pages 419-430, Chelsea C. White and Kerstin Dautenhahn eds., September, 2001. REFEREED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Natural Methods for Learning and Generalization in Human-Robot Domains, in Proceedings, Second International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, July 14-18, 2003 (best student paper nomination). Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Linking Perception and Action in a Control Architecture for Human- Robot Domains, in Proceedings, Thirty-Sixth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, USA, January 6-9, 2003 (best paper award). Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, A hierarchical architecture for behavior-based robots, in Proceedings, First International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, pages 227-233, Bologna, ITALY, July 15-19, 2002. Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Experience-based representation construction: learning from human and robot teachers, Proceedings, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pages 740-745, Maui, Hawaii, USA, October 29 - November 3, 2001. Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Experience-based learning of task representations from humanrobot interaction, Proceedings, IEEE International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation, pages 463-468, Banff, Alberta, CANADA, July 29 - August 1, 2001.
4 REFEREED CONFERENCE POSTERS Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Learning Cooperation From Human-Robot Interaction, Proceedings, 5th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), pages 477-478, Knoxville, TN, USA, October 4-6, 2000. Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Deriving and Using Abstract Representation in Behavior-Based Systems, Proceedings, Seventeenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), page 1087, Austin, Texas, USA, July 30-August 3, 2000. REFEREED WORKSHOP AND SYMPOSIA PAPERS Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Natural Methods for Learning and Generalization in Human-Robot Domains, to appear in Proceedings, AAAI Spring Symposium on Human Interaction with Autonomous Systems in Complex Environments, Palo Alto, CA, March 24-26, 2003. Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Learning task representations from experienced demonstrations, Proceedings, AAAI Fall Symposium on Anchoring Symbols to Sensor Data in Single and Multiple Robot Systems, North Falmouth, MA, Nov 2-4, 2001. INVITED WORKSHOP PAPERS Monica N. Nicolescu, Maja J Matarić, Extending Behavior-Based Systems Capabilities Using An Abstract Behavior Representation, Working Notes of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Parallel Cognition, pages 27-34, North Falmouth, MA, USA, November 3-5, 2000. INVITED TALKS/PRESENTATIONS (excluding conference paper talks) Robot task learning from instructive demonstrations, generalization and practice, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, February 2003. Learning and interacting in human-robot domains, Computer Science Colloquium Series, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, USA, November 2002. An action-embedded framework for learning from demonstration in human-robot domains, HRL Laboratories, Malibu, CA, USA, August 2002. Learning through human-robot interaction, for the DARPA Information Processing Technology Office, DARPATech Symposium, Anaheim, CA, USA, July 2002. An action-embedded framework for learning from demonstration in human-robot domains, USC Learning and Imitation Seminars, Los Angeles, CA, USA, December 2001. An abstract representation for behavior-based robots, Philips Research, Briarcliff Manor, NY, USA, August 2000.
5 PERSONAL Citizenship: Romanian. Gender: Female. Foreign Languages: Romanian (native language), English (fluent), French (knowledgeable).