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]]>Amanda Murdie, Ivan Allen Jr. Chair and Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, will moderate a timely discussion with two experienced leaders on the challenges and responsibilities of leadership in an era of rapid technological change.
Drawing on distinguished careers in public service, business, and civic leadership, former U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss and renowned leadership scholar and former Medtronic CEO Bill George will share lessons learned from leading through adversity and complexity.
After the panel, we will celebrate a transformational commitment to advance the Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership.
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]]>Abstract: As robots increasingly enter homes, workplaces, and assistive settings, they must understand how people naturally communicate and interact in order to collaborate effectively with diverse users. This talk presents a program of research on multimodal and social human-robot interaction that investigates how humans and robots establish shared understanding and adapt their communication to one another. First, I describe our work on multimodal human-to-robot communication through speech, gaze, gesture, and embodied behavior. We show that people often rely on nonverbal cues, particularly gaze, to clarify underspecified verbal instructions. Building on these findings, we develop a gaze-aware multimodal instruction-understanding model to improve target-object grounding and intent understanding. Second, I present a set of studies on robot-to-human communication. These studies examine how robots can establish shared context, align task goals with diverse users, and adapt communication strategies to users' states and interaction contexts. I conclude with implications and open directions for building human-aware robots to support natural, effective, and inclusive human-robot collaboration.
Bio: Na Du is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems, School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include human factors in intelligent systems, human-agent teaming, and interaction design, with applications spanning robotics, transportation, healthcare, and other intelligent systems. She is a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, HFE Women Rising Star Award, and Best Paper Awards from HRI and HFES international conferences. She earned her Ph.D. in Industrial & Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2021.
The IPaT: GVU Lunch Lecture Series is free and features guest speakers presenting on topics related to people-centered technologies and their impact on society. Lunch is provided at 12:00 p.m. (while supplies last) and the talks begin at 12:30 p.m. Join us weekly or watch video replays. Lectures are held in the Tech Square Clubhouse behind the Centergy One building in Technology Square.
https://research.gatech.edu/ipat/lunch-lectures
Patrick Miga graduated from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 2020 and from the University of Colorado Boulder with dual Master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Management in 2023. For the past four years, Patrick has worked at Advanced Space. Initially hired as an engineer, he has since branched out into business development and project management, and now leads the development of technologies for tracking objects in space, especially at the Moon, as an astrodynamics engineer and solutions architect.
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