Download PDF: hwpark_CV.pdf (last updated: Jan. 2018)
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Deep Personalization, Embodied Emotional Intelligence, Human-robot/computer Interaction, Social Computing, Inclusive Technology
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Electrical & Computer Engineering, 2014
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
• Thesis: “Robot Learners: Interactive Instance-based Learning with Social Robots”
• Advisor: Ayanna M. Howard
• Committee: Henrik Christensen, Andrea Thomaz, Charles Kemp, and Linda Wills
• Minor: Computer Science
M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2009
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
• Topic: “Human motion primitives study and recognition”
Minor: Computer Science
B.S., Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 2006
Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea
• Visiting Scholar; University of Waterloo, Canada, 2004–2005
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA
2017-Present Research Scientist | Personal Robots Group, MIT Media Lab
2016 Postdoctoral Associate | Personal Robots Group, MIT Media Lab
• Working with Prof. Cynthia Breazeal and leading the research effort in AI for long-term personalization, embodied emotional intelligence, and applications to education and eldercare. Co-supervising graduate students and advising their theses. Also actively involved in grant writing, submitting research proposals to industry sponsors, and establishing domestic and international collaborations.
• Personalized Companion AI: This research theme seeks to find an optimized agent action policy given an interaction goal, trained during repeated encounters with an individual user. In Personalized Robot Storyteller project, preschool children and a social robot peer exchanged telling stories to each other for three months. Using Q-learning, a policy was trained to tell stories optimized for each child’s engagement and linguistic skill progression. Using this corpus, an approach is developed to train multimodal Personalized Engagement Models to encapsulate individual differences in behavioral engagement cues – a collaboration with Prof. Picard’s Affective Computing group. Using personality and engagement as features to human-robot interaction, Adaptive Peer Role Switching trains an optimal policy for maximizing each user’s learning gains while a collaborative robot peer learns when to provide or ask for help. Future of Aging project studies individual preferences in providing/receiving information to/from proactive agents and ambient environments to inform the design of AI agents that assist elders’ daily living and staying socially and emotionally connected to their network of people.
• Embodied Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence helps an agent understand the user states and interaction context, and aids in delivering its intents and actions with transparent, expressive behavior. In Growth Mindset and Curious Robot project, an expressive cognitive architecture is integrated with Boltzmann machine puzzle solver to guide a robot’s growth mindset and pro-curious behavior that influences a child partner’s perseverance and explorative behavior. Text-to-Motion generates contingent robot motions to accompany the sentiment analyzed from an input sentence and its spoken audio. I trained a linear classifier on a LSTM network trained on billion tweets with our corpus of animated robot speech. To communicate a robot’s attentive state, I trained Reciprocal Backchanneling models to predict timing to produce listener backchannels from speaker’s prosodic features.
2014–2015
ZYROBOTICS, Atlanta, GA
Principal Engineer & Co-founder
Led technology transfer of my PhD work on long-term deployable robot agents and accessible interfaces for providing at-home therapeutic interventions.
• Intelligent Therapy Robot: Prototyped a robot companion that reasons about children’s skill deficits through interaction and presents therapeutic tasks necessary for successful interventions.
• Robot Prompting: Developed an algorithm to train the effective timing and method of providing prompts (verbal, gestural cues) for children to maintain engagement in a task.
• Extended Effects of Robot Intervention: Studied whether the effect of robot intervention can further benefit children with social impairment’s interaction with other people.
2009–2014
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Atlanta, GA
Graduate Research Assistant | Human-Automation Systems Lab
• Interactive Instance-based Learning (IIBL): A Bayesian case-based reasoning
system with neural networks for fast instance retrieval and reuse for robot task learning
from demonstration.
• Reverse LfD Error Modeling: An instance clustering method that exploits children’s demonstration error patterns to model task skill deficits.
• Methods for utilizing touchscreen interface for accessible human-robot interaction:
Developed controllers and interfaces to use touchscreen computers as a shared workspace
for accessible user interaction with robots – Technology licensed to Zyrobotics
• TabAccess, A Wireless Controller for Tablet Accessibility: A bluetooth adapter for connecting alternative switch input devices to smartphones and tablets for users with motor
impairments. Created a standard input protocol for controlling iOS and Android devices via
switch inputs –Technology licensed to Zyrobotics
2012-2014
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Atlanta, GA
Entrepreneurial Lead | NSF I-Corps
• TabAccess: Conducted lab-to-market research on a bluetooth adapter for individuals with
limited upper-body mobility that enables the users to connect alternative input interfaces for
controlling smart devices.
2009
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Atlanta, GA
Simulation and Controls Team | Building Humanoid Robots
• Conducted research with Prof. Mike Stilman on physics modeling and simulation of a
humanoid robot Golem Krang for balance control.
2006-2007
KOREA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Seoul, Korea
Research Scientist | Cognitive Robotics Center, Robot Vision Group
• Conducted research on multi-modal object learning system for visual SLAM with Dr. Sung-Kee Park in collaboration with Dr. Martial Herbert (CMU)
2005-2006
POHANG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Pohang, Korea
Undergraduate Research Assistant | Electrical & Electronics Engineering
• BiPi: Designed a 23-DOF humanoid robot under the advisement of Prof. Sang Woo Kim.
Conducted research on bipedal gait, object tracking, sign reading, and obstacle avoidance
algorithms.
PUBLICATIONS
Please see Publications page
PATENTS
Please see Patents and Research pages
FUNDED GRANTS with Key Contributions
[G.10] NSF NRI:INT:COLLAB: "Development, Deployment and Evaluation of Personalized Learning Companion Robots
for Early Literacy and Language Learning", Sept. 2017 - Aug. 2021
$1.5M (PI: Cynthia Breazeal, Co-PI: Abeer Alwan, Senior personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.9] NSF PFI:BIC: "Development, Deployment and Evaluation of an Intelligent Service System for Personalized Early
Literacy Learning Using Mobile Devices", Aug. 2017 - Jul. 2020
$1M (PI: Cynthia Breazeal, Co-PI: Robin Morris, Senior personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.8] Korea Ministry of Science and ICT, "Social Robot Companion for the Elders' Daily Living Assistance and Social &
Emotional support.", Sept. 2017 - Dec. 2021
$600K (PI: Cynthia Breazeal, Senior personnel & lead writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.7] Huawei, "Learning Companion Robots to Teach English as a Second Language", Oct. 2016
$1.4M (PI: Cynthia Breazeal, Senior personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.6] NSF SBIR Phase I: "An Accessible Platform for Engaging Children with Motor Impairments in the Classroom
Environment", Dec. 2014 - Jun. 2015
$150K (PI: Johnetta MacCalla, Key personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.5] NSF, PFI:AIR-TT: "An Accessible Robotic Platform for Children with Disabilities", May. 2014 - Oct. 2015
$200K (PI: Ayanna M. Howard, Co-PI: Roberto Casas, Key personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.4] Georgia Research Alliance, Venture Lab Phase 1B, Dec. 2013 - Jun. 2014
$25K (PI: Ayanna M. Howard, Key personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.3] Georgia Research Alliance, Venture Lab Phase 1A, Jan. 2013 - Jun. 2013
$25K (PI: Ayanna M. Howard, Key personnel & co-writer: Hae Won Park)
[G.2] Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium, Jan. 2013 - Jun. 2013
$25K (PI: Ayanna M. Howard, Key personnels & co-writers: Hae Won Park, Giancarlo Valentin)
[G.1] NSF, Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps), Jul, 2012 - Dec. 2012
$50K (PI: Ayanna M. Howard, Entrepreneurial lead & lead writer: Hae Won Park)
INVITED TALKS & PANELS
[IT.26] Living with Personal Robots
Google Brain, People and AI Research (PAIR) Symposium, 2017
[IT.25] Robot's Artificial Mind and how it can Influence the Human Mind
Disney Research, 2017
[IT.24] Living with Personal Robots
TODAM Boston, 2017
[IT.23] Long-term Personalization of Social Robots: Approaches and Challenges
RSS Workshop on Perception and Interaction dynamics in Child-Robot Interaction, 2017
[IT.22] Entrepreneurship Panel
RSS Women in Robotics Workshop III, 2017
[IT.21] Robot's Artificial Mind and how it can Influence the Human Mind
HRI Pioneers, 2016
[IT.20] Robot's Artificial Mind and how it can Influence the Human Mind
Seoul National University, 2016
[IT.19] Robot's Artificial Mind and how it can Influence the Human Mind
Dongguk University, 2016
[IT.18] Robot's Artificial Mind and how it can Influence the Human Mind
Robot Open Society Korea, 2016
[IT.17] Inclusive Robotics: Customizing Robot Intervention for Individuals with Special Needs
RoboGrads Student Seminar, Georgia Tech, 2015
[IT.16] (Guest Lecturer) Socially Assistive Robotics and Its Path to Inclusive Robotics
Assistive Robotics, University of Maryland College Park, 2014
[IT.15] Robot Learners: Interactive Instance-based Learning with Social Robots
Computer Science & Engineering Seminar, Notre Dame University, 2014
[IT.14] Robot Learners: Interactive Instance-based Learning with Social Robots
Robotics Seminar, George Mason University, 2014
[IT.13] Inclusive Robotics: Intelligent Social Robots Helping People
DARwIn Workshop, ASME IDETC, 2014
[IT.12] Interactive Instance-based Learning and Its Application to Therapeutic Tasks
HRI Pioneers Workshop (One of the two invited student presentations), 2014
[IT.11] Interactive Learning in a Shared Human-Robot Workspace
NSF Avatar & Robotics Signing Creatures Workshop, Washington D.C., 2013
[IT.10] (Tutorial) Using Tablets and Robots to Engage Children with Disabilities in STEM
Closing the Gap Conference, Bloomington, MN, 2013
[IT.09] Instance-based Learning from Demonstration in a Shared Human-robot Workspace
Bosch Research & Technology Center, Palo Alto, CA, 2013
[IT.08] Task-Learning Framework for Human-Robot Interaction
Korea Academic Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, 2013
[IT.07] CBR-LfD: Towards Human-robot Collaboration for Task Engagement
Yujin Robots Co. Ltd., Seoul, Korea, 2013
[IT.06] Task-Learning Framework for Human-Robot Interaction
Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, 2013
[IT.05] Case-based Reasoning Approach to Learning from Demonstration
AI Brain, Seoul, Korea, 2013
[IT.04] TabAccess: A wireless controller for tablet accessibility
Abilities Expo, Atlanta, GA, 2013
[IT.03] (Tutorial) Aropability: Robot-programming curriculum development for students with disabilities
Closing the Gap Conference, Bloomington, MN, 2012
[IT.02] RAS (Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation)-based intervention for engaging individuals with motor impairments in a physical task
Atlanta Grammy Board Meeting, Atlanta, GA, 2012
[IT.01] TabAccess: Celebrating 100-days Before The Olympics/Paralympics, Representing GT-Robotics
British Consulate General Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, 2012
HONORS & AWARDS
• Best Paper, "Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer” | HRI 2017
• Best Paper, "Attentive Robot Listener Engages Children in Language Learning" | New Friends 2016
• Best Video Nominee, "Telling Stories to Robots: The Effect of Backchanneling on a Child's Storytelling" | HRI 2017
• Best Startup Nominee | Best US Startup | Robohub Readers Pick, "Zyrobotics: Zyro Robot Therapy System, a
Personalized Robot Coach that Gamifies Therapy for Kids with Disabilities" | RoboLaunch 2015
• Best Presentation Nominee, ”Angry Darwin: Robot Learners & Interaction Studies”
Pecha-Kucha Opening Reception Speaker Series | ICRA 2014
• First Place, “Angry DARwIn: Human-robot Task Collaboration on a Shared Tablet Workspace”
Humanoids Application Challenge | ICRA 2013
• Best Video Award, “Angry DARwIn: Human-robot Task Collaboration on a Shared Tablet Workspace”
Humanoids Application Challenge | ICRA 2013
• Finalist, “GTAccessors: Wearable Tablet Interface for Individuals with Motor Impairment”
Cornell Cup Competition sponsored by Intel 2012
• Second Place, “I-Natural: Wearable Tablet Interface”
Cisco VIP Innovation Competition 2012
• First Place, “23-DoF humanoid design and bipedal walking algorithm”
Senior Design Project | POSTECH, 2006
• Distinguished Scholar Scholarship | Institute of Information Technology Assessment, 2004-2005
• Highest GPA Dean’s Award | POSTECH, 2003
• Diploma of Honors | POSTECH, 2003, 2004, 2005
SERVICE & VOLUNTEER WORK
Editorship & Academic Organization
• Publications Chair | HRI 2019
• Program Committee | HRI 2018
• Co-organizer, Robots for Learning - R4L : Inclusive Learning | HRI 2018
• Associate Editor | RO-MAN 2018
• Associate Editor | RO-MAN 2017
• Guest Editor, Special Issue on Assistive & Rehabilitation Robotics | Autonomous Robots 2017
• Associate Editor, Special Session on Child Robot Interaction | RO-MAN 2016
• Organizer, Workshop on Long-term Child Robot Interaction | RO-MAN 2016
• Finance Chair | Robotics@MIT RoboCon 2016
• Associate Editor | RO-MAN 2015
• Organizing Committee, PhD Forum Co-Chair | ICRA 2015
• Program Chair, Human-Robot Interaction Pioneers Workshop | HRI 2015
• Workshop Organizer, Assistive Robotics for Individuals with Disabilities | IROS 2014
Reviewer
• ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction (THRI)
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO)
• International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)
International Journal of Social Robots (IJSR)
• Frontiers in Robotics and AI
• IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC)
• Intelligent Service Robotics (JIST)
• ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
• International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)
• IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA)
• IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots & Systems (IROS)
• ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
• IEEE International Symposium on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
• IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids)
• IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR)
Outreach
• STEM Night | Boston Public Schools, 2017
• Girls Who Code 2016–2017
• Keynote at SMART Girls Summit | Girls Incorporated of Lynn, MA, 2016
• Cambridge Science Festival, 2016–2017
• Keynote and Panelist at Women's Robot Session | Robot Open Society Korea, 2015
• Brains & Bots Day | Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 2014, 2015
• Robot Programming Camp for Children with Motor Impairment, 2011–2014
• National Robotics Week, Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center Open House, 2013–2014
• H.O.T. Days @ Georgia Tech, Robot Programming Workshop, 2012
• Scratch Workshop for Children affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder, 2011
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2011–2013
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Atlanta, GA
Teaching Assistant, Interdisciplinary Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Class
• Lectured submodule classes in embedded systems, sensor fusion, and interactive interface
development for 6 semesters. Closely mentored individual project progresses.
2009–2013
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Atlanta, GA
STEM Curriculum Developer
• Developed robot programming curriculum for students with disabilities using Android and
iOS mobile platforms.
2003–2004
POHANG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Pohang, Korea
• Teaching Assistant, Circuit Analysis, Intro Signal Processing, and Digital Systems
• Selected among the four special teaching assistants to hold 6 hours per week office hours
for sophomore classes.
RESEARCH SUPERVISION
Gradute Students
• Anastasia Ostrowski, "Designing Socially Assistive Robots for Elders" | MIT, 2017—present
• Hanna Lee, "Interactive Storybooks: Reading with a Robot Peer for Improved Early Literacy" | MIT, 2017—present
• Safinah Ali, "Assessing children's pro-curious behavior and fostering curiosity with social robots" | MIT, 2017—present
• Stefania Druga, "Cognimates: collaborative creative learning with embodied intelligent agents" | MIT, 2017—present
• Ishaan Grover, "Predicting human cognition in terms of concept learnability using semantic associations" | MIT, 2016—present
• Huili Chen, "Robot's Adaptive Role Switching for Improving Children's Language and Literacy Learning" | MIT, 2016—present
• Nikhita Singh, "Proactive, Connected Spaces" | MIT, 2016—present
• Randi Williams, "PopBots: Leveraging Social Robots to Aid Preschool Children's Artificial Intelligence Education" | MIT, 2016—present
Undergraduate Students
• William Hartman, "Multimodal Learning with Deep Boltzmann Machines for Expressive Robot Motion Generation" | MIT, 2017
• Wonsuk Choi, "Multimodal Learning with Deep Boltzmann Machines for Expressive Robot Motion Generation" | MIT, 2017
• Aradhana Adhikari, "NLP-based narrative similarity scoring between a robot and children's storytelling" | MIT, 2016–2017
• Madelyn Payne, "Children's story corpus" | MIT, 2016
• Sean Ko, "Affect mirroring on a social robot platform" | MIT, 2016
• Jose Valles Salas, "SORO: a social robotics toolkit" | MIT, 2016
• Bi Ge, “Modeling therapeutic prompting behaviors in ABA sessions” | Georgia Tech, 2015
• Zhen Xu, “Robot emotion generator for everyday users” | Georgia Tech, 2015
• Princesa Cloutier, “Parameterized robot emotion generation (facial)” | WPI, 2015
• Jinwon Pyo, “Control laws for parameterized robot emotion generation (motion)” | Georgia Tech, 2015
• Hokyung Hwang, “Designing applied behavior analysis (ABA) tasks for robot intervention” | Georgia
Tech, 2015
• Jin Xu, “Customized switch interface for accessible computing” | Georgia Tech, 2013
• Gregory Simpson, “Bipedal robot’s pose auto-adjustment for tablet interaction” | North Carolina A&T State University, 2012
• Ric’Sheika Branch, “Robot motion generation in simulation” | Winston Salem State University, 2012
• Giancarlo Valentin, William Johnston, Siu Chuen Yau, Tiffany Jernigan, & Andrew Nemchik, “GTAccessors: Wearable tablet
interface for individuals with motor impairment”, 2012 Cornell Cup USA com-
petition finalist team | Georgia Tech, 2011–2012
• Madeleyne Vaca, “Wearable interface for robot-arm control” | Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science,
& Technology, 2011–2012
• Luke Roberts, “Joint mapping of human’s upper-body motion to a humanoid using RGB-D sensors in
ROS” | UMBC, 2011
• Jennifer Gregory, “Kinesthetic learning and playback with Pleo” | Hampton University, 2011
• Adrienne Haynes, “Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for iOS” | Norfolk State University, 2011
• Curley Williams, “Sensor fusion for alternative input interface” | Fort Valley State University, 2011
• Michelle McIntire, “Exploring touch-based sensors for wearable interface applications” | Wheeler Magnet School, 2010–2011
• Christopher Chidi, “ASL recognition using data glove for mobile robot control” | Georgia Tech, 2009
• Nazar Trilisky, “American Sign Language (ASL) recognition using data glove” | Georgia Tech, 2008