Ph.D. Defense!
October 2023
I'm very happy to announce that I have just defended my Ph.D. thesis, titled "Learning from Interactions: Forward and Inverse Decision-Making in Autonomous Dynamical Systems".
You can find the thesis online here!
Title: "Learning from Interactions: Forward and Inverse
Decision-Making for Autonomous Dynamical Systems"
Date: 23rd of November 2023, at 10:00
Place: Kollegiesalen, Brinellvägen 6, Stockholm, and Zoom
Main Supervisor: Prof. Bo Wahlberg
Co-supervisor: Prof. Alexandre Proutiere
Chairperson: Prof. Elling W. Jacobsen
Opponent:
Prof. Sandra Hirche, Technical University of Munich. [Bio]
Committee:
Prof. Karinne Ramirez-Amaro, Chalmers University of Technology. [Bio]
Prof. Pedro U. Lima, Instituto Superior Técnico. [Bio]
Prof. Roy Smith, ETH Zürich. [Bio]
Prof. Iolanda Leite, KTH. [Bio] (stand-in)
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Robotics in Africa
October 2023
During my visit to Gaborone, Nairobi, and Kigali, I had the pleasure of meeting organizations and companies doing amazing work: BrainSTREAM, Learn to Play in the Bontleng community, Kenya Climate Innovation Center and the UNESCO chair on Climate Change, Resilience and Sustainability, iLabAfrica and iBizAfrica, NAS International Group, Asulma Center, Norrsken House Kigali, CMU-Africa, and KEZA Education Future Lab.
Visit to African Universities
October 2023
This month I had the privilege to be sent by the KTH Global Development Hub in a staff exchange to KTH's partner universities in Africa. For three weeks I visited Botho University in Gaborone, Botswana, Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya, and the University of Rwanda in Kigali, Rwanda.
I was very well received by the contacts persons in the universities and had the honor of meeting the deans of engineering, directors of graduate studies, research and innovation hubs, and many more fantastic people.
We discussed Challenge-Driven Education (CDE), I gave talks on introductory and advanced robotics, and planned collaborations for future projects in robotics. Keep an eye out for updates!
WASP INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
August 2023
Today I was one the student representatives invited to participate in an event with the International Scientific Advisory Board of WASP, which consists of top professors in the fields of AI, ML, and autonomous systems from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, UC Berkeley, EPFL, ETH, and KU Leuven.
We pitched our research and discussed in in a poster session, and talked about the journey through the WASP graduate school.
Accepted papers for CDC 2023
July 2023
I'm very happy to announce that our two invited papers just got accepted for presentation at CDC this year!
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Diagnosing and Augmenting Feature Representations in Correctional Inverse Reinforcement Learning;
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Optimal Transport for Correctional Learning.
I'm very thankful to all my collaborators
Andreea Bobu, Rebecka Winqvist, Francesco Quinzan, Cristian R. Rojas and Bo Wahlberg, and I'm looking forward for seeing you in Singapore in December.
Invited speaker at AI-Lab, OsloMet
Neuroscience for Robotics and ML
June 2023
To end the semester in the best way, this month I was invited by the AI-Lab of OsloMet University to give a talk about my work on reinforcement learning and time perception, hosted by Profs. Gustavo Mello and Anis Yazidi.
We discussed the methods we have been using and how they might be applied to state-of-the-art AI algorithms.
Stay tuned!
Speaker at Thai Embassy event
Swedish Research Efforts in Digitalization for Sustainability
May 2023
This week I was invited by the TNIU unit of the Thai embassy to give a talk to executives from the Thai public and private sectors about research for Digitalization and Sustainability. It was a great exchange of ideas and possibilities for collaboration between Sweden and Thailand.
You can find the LinkedIn post here.
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EAGxNordics
Volunteering
April 2023
This week I have been volunteering at the Effective Altruism - Nordics conference, where we attended and helped with talks, workshops, meetups and more. Some of the topics discussed were reducing existential risk, effective governance for emerging technologies, the work of the Against Malaria Foundation, and politics.
WASP Winter Conference
WASP
January 2023
This year the WASP community gathered in Norrköping for the WASP Winter Conference. It was great to meet so many people I hadn't seen in two years because of Covid-19 and hear about the exciting ways in which their research evolved during this time in the poster sessions. I presented a poster titled Learning from interactions.
London International Trip
WASP
October 2022
I just came back from the WASP International trip to England, organised by WASP. It was a week full of exciting trips to different universities and companies, including the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, King’s College London, ARM and Astra Zeneca, where we listened to presentations, presented posters about our research and interacted with student from these universities working on similar topics.
ERNSI
European Research Network on System Identification
September 2022
This year's ERNSI took place in the Irish College of Leuven, Belgium, and it was the first time we met in person after two years. I presented the ideas that I'm currently working on, in a poster titled Model Misalignment in Human-Robot Interaction.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Research presentation
July 2022
This Friday I went to Stanford University to present my research to the Stanford Intelligent and Interactive Autonomous Systems Group (ILIAD)! The ILIAD group is led by Professor Dorsa Sadigh and they focus on the development of algorithms for AI agents that safely and reliably interact with people. You can see their webpage here.
CDC 2022
A Teacher-Student Markov Decision Process-based Framework for
Online Correctional Learning
July 2022
I am happy to announce that our paper titled "A Teacher-Student Markov Decision Process-based Framework for Online Correctional Learning" was accepted for publication at the 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, which will take place this December in Mexico! Hope to see you there!
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Research visitor
April 2022
Super exciting news!! I just moved to California to start my exchange visit at UC Berkeley!
For the next four months I will be working at BAIR (Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research), as a part of the C3.ai DTI (Digital Transformation Institute) and in collaboration with Professor Shankar Sastry's group. The goal of this program is to accelerate the benefits of artificial intelligence for business, government, and society.
I will be partially funded by WASP
COMPUTATIONAL NEUROLOGY
Presentation for the course Advanced Topics in Brain Science
February 2022
I just presented a summary of my studies in the topic of Computational Neurology that I have been studying the past months. It focused on the importance of computational models for the diagnostic and treatment of psychiatric disorders, in particular ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), SZ (Schizophrenia) and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).
NEW JOURNAL PAPER
Hidden Markov Models: Inverse Filtering, Belief Estimation and Privacy Protection
November 2021
Our article has been published in the Journal of Systems Science and Complexity (JSSC) and summarizes our work in inverse filtering for HMMs and adversarial systems.
NEW JOURNAL PAPER
A Biologically-Inspired Computational Model of Time Perception
September 2021
Our article has been published in the IEEE Transactions in Cognitive and Developmental Systems and summarizes our work in forward and inverse problems in biological systems.
ERNSI 2021
European Research Network on System Identification (ERNSI)
I attended the latest edition of the ERNSI workshop, which took place locally (in KTH we received people from Swedish SysId groups) and online. I presented a poster based on my work from the paper Cooperative System Identification via Correctional Learning.
Teaser slide:
September 2021
LICENCIATE THESIS
Forward and Inverse Decision-Making in Adversarial, Cooperative, and Biologically-Inspired Dynamical Systems
I successfully defended my Licentiate thesis on the 11th of July, at KTH Royal Insitute of Technology. My opponent was professor Karinne Ramirez-Amaro, from Chalmers University.
Link to the thesis here.
June 2021
SUPERVISOR OF THE YEAR AWARD
Chairperson of the first edition of the award, by the PhD Chapter of KTH
It's a pleasure to announce that together with Mohit Daga, we just co-created and launched the first edition of the Supervisor of the Year award, an award that will be given by the PhD Chapter to outstanding supervisors nominated by their students. The goal is to highlight exemplary supervision practices in Third Cycle Education at KTH, and this will remain an annual tradition for the years to come. This year, the Supervisor of the Year was Prof. György Dán.
See the KTH article here.
March 2021
BEST PAPER & BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD
Teaching robots to perceive time: A twofold learning approach
I am very honored to announce that, together with my co-authors Rodrigo Ventura and Bo Wahlberg, we have been awarded the Best Paper and Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE 10th International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-EpiRob), which took place this October. Due to Covid-19 the conference was held online instead of in Chile, and the list of nominees can be found here.
This paper is a result of the work I did during my Master's Thesis, on the topic of giving robots time perception mechanisms similar to those of humans and animals. The work was done in collaboration with the learning lab of the Champalimaud Foundation, where they study the mechanism responsible for estimating the passage of time in mice (image on the left).
October 2020
58th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
Nice, France
Robert Mattila and I attended CDC'19 to present our L-CSS paper "Estimating private beliefs of Bayesian agents based on observed decisions".
December 2019
WASP International Trip
Germany
Together with other students from the first batch of the WASP-AI graduate school we just returned from a weeklong study trip to Germany. We visited the research institute Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, both the campus in Stuttgart and in Tübingen, the RWTH Aachen University, and the Technical University Darmstadt.
During the trip we presented our research in a very international environment and were introduced to different research settings. We explored both the experimental part of AI and ML with visits to amazing robotics labs and also the mathematical foundations with talks from great researchers.
November 2019
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ERNSI 2019
Maastricht, the Netherlands
Together with my colleagues from the System Identification group @ KTH I attended the annual workshop of the European Research Network on System Identification (ERNSI) that was held at Kasteel Vaeshartelt in Maastricht, The Netherlands. Robert Mattila and I presented a poster on our most recent work in estimating private beliefs from observed decision.
September 2019
Rising Stars Retreat
Organizer and board member of WOP@KTH
As a board member of WOP@KTH, a network for female-identifying PhD students and Postdocs at KTH, I was one of the five organizers of the first Rising Stars retreat, which took place at the Djuronaset hotel in the Stockholm archipelago.
With funding from the KTH Opportunities fund, the PhD Chapter, and the different schools within KTH, we brought together 70 students in a 2-day retreat with the topic "Career building: mission, leadership, presence and relational intelligence” full of networking, workshops and fun activities, with two invited international speakers: Annelène Decaux and Jennifer Krahn.
April 2019
57th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
Miami, Florida, USA
Together with my colleagues from the DDCS division @ KTH we attended CDC'18 where I listened to very interesting presentations from all fields within Control.
December 2018
WARA-PS Demo Arena
WASP
WASP-PS is the WASP arena for Public Safety and this September we went to Västervik to demonstrate an autonomous search-and-rescue system for sea use, together with industry partners like SAAB and ERICSSON.
Together with Linnea Persson, I worked on the control and vision systems associated with enabling drones to autonomously land on boats. You can find more info on the article and video below.
December 2018
ERNSI 2018
Pembroke College, Cambridge, U.K.
Together with my colleagues from the System Identification group @ KTH I attended the annual workshop of the European Research Network on System Identification (ERNSI) that was held at Pembroke College, Cambridge, U.K. I was very excited to hear that the work that I did during my master thesis - "Temporal perspectives: A Bayesian approach for robot's perception of time", had been selected to be presented as a talk.
September 2018
I was accepted as an affiliated student of the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP), where I will belong to batch 1 of the WASP AI MLX (eXplainable Machine Learning) track of the WASP Graduate School. Within my batch, I will belong to the Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and other AI cluster, and will take the courses Deep Learning and GANs, and Graphical Models, Bayesian Learning, and Statistical Relational Learning. As a part of WASP, I will also attend Winter Conferences, Summer Schools, International trips, and Research Arena demos.
I'm very excited about this opportunity!
November 2018
WASP Affiliation
Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program
PHD POSITION AT KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Division of Decision and Control Systems, Department of Intelligent Systems
I was the recipient of the KTH Electrical Engineering Scholarship of Excellence and was offered a PhD position at KTH, under the supervision of Professor Bo Wahlberg and co-supervision of Professor Alexandre Proutiere, and funded by the NewLEADS project, and moved to Stockholm, Sweden.
July 2018
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MASTER DEGREE IN EECS
Major in Decision Systems and Control and minor in Computer Science
I was awarded my Masters degree at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal, in July 2018, with a grade of 17/20.
That day I successfully defended my Master thesis titled "Temporal perspectives: Exploring robot's perception of time", which was done under the supervision of Professor Rodrigo Ventura and in collaboration with the Champalimaud Foundation, on the intersection of Robotics, Machine Learning and Neurosciences. It got a grade of 18/20.
July 2018
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CHAMPALIMAUD FOUNDATION
Research Collaboration in Neuroscience
I am very excited about the new collaboration that we just started with Joe Paton's Learning lab at the Champalimaud Foundation for my Master thesis!
They are studying the mechanisms behind time perception using neurological signals in mice - see this Science article.
Our goal is to work on the intersection of Robotics, Machine Learning and Neurosciences, and in particular replicate biological timing mechanisms in a robot.
Spring 2018
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GULBENKIAN SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Internship
This summer I am doing an internship at the Gulbenkian Science Institute, with Lounes Chikhi's group in Population and Conservation Genetics. His group studies how genetic and genomic data are influenced by the demographic history of populations - such as population collapses, expansions, or admixture processes - which can be a result of climate change or human activities. Some of the species they study the most include the Madagascar lemurs and African colobus monkeys.
I will use the IICR (inverse-instantaneous coalescence rate) and the non-stationary structured coalescent models to do demographic inference with arbitrary changes in population structure. T
June - July 2017
Exhibition at London Science Museum
JUNITEC and Patient Innovation
During my time at JUNITEC we were contacted by Patient Innovation to develop a technical solution for a pianist with the Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Together with two colleagues, we created "heatable termal pockets" to allow him to heat his hands on the break between songs during concerts. Starting from scratch, we used Arduino to control the sensors and actuators and designed and 3D printed the hardware.
This project won the ‘Innovation Project of the Year’ By JADE Portugal (European Confederation of Junior Enterprises); and is now one of the projects that will be a part of the “Beyond the Lab: The DIY Science Revolution” exhibition, which will be touring around 29 European countries from July 2016 to May 2018, starting at the London Science Museum.
2016
3D printing workshops
JUNITEC and Verao na ULisboa
Verao na Ulisboa is an initiative that started in 2014 with the goal of showing elementary and high school students what being in the university is like. They spend one month learning about a variety of areas in all University of Lisbon schools, from biology to literature to engineering. See the video here.
As part of JUNITEC I gave 3D printing workshops to the students that came to visit IST. They learned about the technology, materials used, and how to design the product. In the end, they printed and took home their creations.
July 2015
Wordpress workshops
JUNITEC and ASPA
When I was a member of JUNITEC (a junior company that bridges the gap between the academic knowledge of IST students and the wish for companies to develop innovative technological projects), in 2015 I gave two Wordpress workshops to the "Associação Portuguesa de Síndrome de Asperger" (Portuguese Association for Asperger Syndrome). The goal was to apt the participants to get involved in the digital transformation of society, starting by creating their own website.
March 2015
