Curriculum Vitae - CV

• Robot programming by demonstration
• Human-robot interaction
• Machine learning

• Learning by imitation
• Artificial intelligence

PhD in robot programming by demonstration at the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
"Continuous Extraction of Task Constraints in a Robot Programming by Demonstration Framework"
Supervisor: Prof. Aude Billard.
Committee: Prof. Hannes Bleuler, EPFL, Prof. Herve Bourlard, IDIAP Research Institute, Dr Yiannis Demiris, Imperial College London (ICL), UK, Prof. Stefan Schaal, University of Southern California (USC), USA.
Oral exam: May 1st, 2007.
Public presentation: July 6th, 2007.
Awards: Robotdalen Scientific Award, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Award, EPFL-Press distinction.

MSc in Microengineering, specialization in robotics, EPFL, Switzerland. MSc thesis on human-robot interfaces at the Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL), EPFL, Switzerland
"PDA Interface for Humanoid Robots using Speech and Vision Processing"
Supervisor: Prof. Aude Billard.
Committee: Prof. Jean-Daniel Nicoud, DIDEL S.A., EPFL.
Oral exam: March 1st, 2003.

BSc in Microengineering. EPFL, Switzerland.

Postdoctoral research fellow at the LASA Laboratory, EPFL, Switzerland.
Development of robot learning by imitation approaches to handle human-robot collaborative working scenarios and development of dynamical systems to handle versatile human-robot interactions.

Visiting research fellow at the CNRS-AIST Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory (JRL) leaded by Prof. Abderrahmane Kheddar, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan (1 month).

Visiting research fellow at the Adaptive Systems Research Group leaded by Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn and Prof. Chrystopher Nehaniv, University of Hertfordshire (UH), Hatfield, UK (2 weeks).

Visiting research fellow at the Humanoid Robotics and Computational Neuroscience department (HRCN) leaded by Prof. Gordon Cheng, Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute (ATR), Kyoto, Japan (1 month).

Visiting research fellow at the Computational Learning and Motor Control Lab (CLMC) leaded by Prof. Stefan Schaal, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, USA (1 month).

Robotdalen Scientific Award for best PhD thesis.

"The jury was impressed by the practical and economic importance of the problem, the systematic analysis and innovative layered approach of its implementation, the completeness of the solution, and the open release of source code, demonstrating confidence in the solution independence from specifics of any particular robot hardware or manipulation task."

ABB Award for best PhD thesis.

"For the thorough and exemplary work in his Ph.D. thesis and important scientific contributions resolving two major issues in robot programming by demonstration."

EPFL-Press distinction for PhD Thesis.

First prize in the Grand Challenge on Human-Robot Interaction at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'2008).

Best paper award of the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Jeju, Korea. Paper on "Active Teaching in Robot Programming by Demonstration".

A Probabilistic Programming by Demonstration Framework Handling Constraints in Joint Space and Task Space. Workshop on Grasp and Task Learning by Imitation. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Nice, France, 2008.

A Robot Programming by Demonstration Framework Integrating Statistical and Social Cues. Workshop on Interactive Robot Learning. Robotics: Science and Systems Conference (RSS), Zurich, Switzerland, 2008.

Humanoid robots and learning by imitation. Industrial forum on robotics (RobotX), Yverdon, Switzerland, 2008.

A Framework Integrating Statistical and Social Cues to Teach a Humanoid Robot New Skills. Workshop on Social Interaction with Intelligent Indoor Robots. International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Pasadena, CA, USA, 2008.

Extraction of Task Constraints in a Robot Programming By Demonstration. Workshop on Concept Learning for Embodied Agents. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Roma, Italia, 2007.

Learning and Probabilistic Representation of a Task in a Humanoid Robot. Workshop on Collaborative Human-Robot Teamwork. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Orlando, Florida, USA, 2006.

Program Committee of the symposium on New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction, Edinburgh, Scotland, 8-9 April 2009.

Member of the Technical Committee on Robot Learning, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), 2008.

European Integrated Project ROBOT@CWE (Advanced robotic systems in future collaborative working environments). 3-years project started in 2006 under contract FP6-034002 involving 7 universities and 2 industrial partners.

European Integrated Project FEELIX GROWING (Feel, interact, express: a global approach to development with interdisciplinary grounding). 4-years project started in 2006 under contract FP6-IST-045169 involving 6 universities and 2 industrial partners.

European Integrated Project COGNIRON ("The Cognitive Companion"). 4-years project started in 2004 under contract FP6-IST-002020 involving 8 universities.

IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), 2007 and 2008.
IEEE Transactions on on Autonomous Mental Development (AMD), 2008.
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2005, 2007 and 2008.
Autonomous Robots (AR), 2008.
International Journal of Humanoid Robotics (IJHR), 2007 and 2008.
Advanced Robotic Systems (ARS), 2007.
International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2007.
Neural Networks (NN), 2005.
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2006, 2007 and 2008.
IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2008.

Guest lecturer for Applied Machine Learning course, class on Hidden Markov Models for graduate students in Microengineering, EPFL (class of 2 hours, 2007 and 2008).

Supervision of Applied Machine Learning lab for graduate students in Microengineering, EPFL, 2006.

Supervision of practical work on human-robot interfaces and image processing during one semester, robotics class of 3 hours per week for graduate students in Microengineering, EPFL, 2004.

Supervision of a half-day workshop on human-robot interfaces for humanoid robots and industrial robots during the international Winter School on Human Robot Interaction (CWSHRI) organized by the COGNIRON European integrated project, Lausanne, Switzerland, January 21-25, 2008.

Supervision of a half-day workshop on human-robot interfaces and vision processing for the international Summer School on Human-Robot Interaction organized by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) and the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR), Volterra, Italy, July 19-23, 2004.

External expert for the exam of the Autonomous Robots course for PhD students, 2007.