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Hello everyone! I will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) from Fall 2025.

Background
Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Associate at Virignia Tech (VT). I work on personalizing robot behaviors in the Collaborative Robotics Lab (Collab) directed by Dr. Dylan Losey. I did my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC) where I was advised by Dr. Stefanos Nikolaidis and collaborated with Dr. Satyandra K. Gupta. My Ph.D. thesis made theoretical and practical advances in learning transferable robot behaviors from human demonstrations. I also have a M.S. in Robotics from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) under Dr. Zhi (Jane) Li.

Research
I am interested in robots learning from human interactions for assistive, healthcare, and manufacturing applications. I develop human-robot interfaces and learning algorithms that enable everyday users to seamlessly interact with assistive robots. My research spans mechatronics, machine learning, and human-robot interactions.


Feel free to reach me via email at herambnemlekar[at]gmail[dot]com.

Recent Work


     

News

2025

  • My work on learning low-dimensional interfaces for personalizing robots was accepted to T-HRI. [Link]

Previous highlights

  • I joined Virginia Tech as a Postdoctoral Associate in Jan 2024. [Link]
  • I successfully defended my PhD dissertation in May 2023!  [Link]
    Defense
    My defense committee 😊
  • Medium featured my work on transfer learning of human preferences. [Link]
  • USC Viterbi showcased my work in the article: "Robots Predict Human Intention for Faster Builds". [Link]
  • My paper was the finalist for the Best Systems Paper Award at the 2023 HRI conference! [Link]
  • WIRED featured my work on inferring human preferences in an article "Why Scientists Love Making Robots Build Ikea Furniture". [Link]
  • USC Viterbi showcased my ICRA paper in their article "Need help building IKEA furniture? This robot learns your preferences and lends a hand". [Link]

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