Biography
Dr. Gita Sukthankar received her Ph.D.(2007) from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, an M.S. in Robotics (CMU), and an A.B. in psychology from Princeton University. From 2000-2003, she worked as a researcher at Compaq Research/HP Labs (CRL) in the handheld computing group. In 2009, Dr.Sukthankar was selected for an Air Force Young Investigator award, the DARPA Computer Science Study Panel, and an NSF CAREER award. She is the co-organizer of the AAAI workshop series on Plan, Activity, and Intent Recognition. At UCF, she directs the Intelligent Agents Lab which focuses on three key aspects of social computational systems:
- recognizing and predicting human intention
- cooperation/teamwork
- modeling group dynamics
Research Interests
- Multi-agent systems
- Machine learning
- Activity/plan recognition for:
- Games and simulation systems
- Assistive technologies
- Human-robot interaction
- Social-computational systems
Other Experience
- HP Labs – Cambridge Research Laboratory
Member of Research Staff, 2000–2003 - PARC – Sabbatical Visitor, 2015-2016
Professional Activities
- Program chair, International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (2018)
- DARPA ISAT Advisory Group (2015-2018)
- IFAAMAS Board of Directors (2016-2022)
- Co-chair AAAI Symposium Series (2012-2017)
- General chair, AAAI Conference on AI and Interactive Digital Entertainment (2013)
- Lead editor on Plan, Activity, and Intent Recognition: Theory and Practice and Social Interaction in Virtual Worlds
Honors & Awards
- UCF Reach for the Stars Award (2015)
- CECS Dean’s Research Professorship Award (2013)
- UCF Research Incentive Award (2013)
- UCF Faculty Excellence for Doctoral Mentoring (Engineering and Sciences) (2012)
- ACM and IEEE Senior Member
- CECS Distinguished Researcher (asst. professor), 2010
- Charles N. Millican Faculty Fellow (2010, 2012)
- DARPA Computer Science Study Group, (2009)
- NSF CAREER (2009)
- Air Force Young Investigator Program (2009)
- ONR Summer Faculty Fellow (2008)