Dr. Christopher Atkeson

Biography

Christopher G. Atkeson is a Professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He received his M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics with a focus on Computer Science from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Science from M.I.T. He joined the faculty at M.I.T. in 1986 and later moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing in 1994, before returning to CMU in 2000. His research focuses on enabling robots to learn strategies for various tasks through direct instruction and observation, using methods like reinforcement learning. Atkeson's work encompasses perception (vision, speech, sounds, and touch), language understanding, and the physical reasoning of robots. His goal is to develop humanoid robots that can perceive and interact with human behavior effectively. He has received several awards, including the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship. Atkeson's research interests include machine learning, nonparametric learning, memory-based learning, reinforcement learning, and modeling human behavior.

Research Interests