CSE Colloquium: Are We Ready to Embrace Autonomy?

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ABSTRACT: Autonomy is finding its way into various aspects of our lives: managing our investment portfolios, driving us from a place to another, and controlling our infrastructure networks. Soon, autonomous systems will be expected to be a part of our complex and ever-changing environment. Not only do we need to prepare autonomous systems for the complexity of the world, but more importantly, we need to convince humans to live with them. 

In this talk, I will present my work in efficient, trustworthy, and human-centered decision-making for human-autonomy co-existence. In particular, I will discuss my contributions in developing theoretically grounded algorithms that enable an autonomous system to 1) identify the most useful information and efficiently extract that from large-scale, multi-modal, and noisy data, 2) learn and replan at runtime while incorporating evolving knowledge into its sequential decision-making, and 3) make interpretable decisions to effectively communicate and collaborate with humans. Finally, I will conclude this talk by discussing my future research on addressing the challenges of having competent, autonomous systems that interact with humans, empower them, and are socially, ethically, and economically beneficial. 

BIOGRAPHY: Mahsa Ghasemi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Austin, supervised by Prof. Ufuk Topcu. Her research focuses on theoretical and foundational advancements preparing autonomous systems to co-exist with humans in our complex world. Her contributions enable efficient and reliable integration of autonomy in various applications such as robotics, shared autonomy, and networked systems. 

Mahsa has been selected as a Rising Star in Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and a Rising Star in Machine Learning. She has also been selected for the Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ Pathways into the Academy program. Prior to her Ph.D., she received her B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, and her M.S.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, where she was a recipient of the Cockrell School of Engineering Fellowship.