Stephane Hatgis-Kessell

Hello, I am Stephane Hatgis-Kessell. I am a rising Junior at the University of Texas at Austin, and am a computer science major in the Turing Scholars Honors Program. I have previously conducted research on preference based reinforcement learning at UT Austin and with the Bosch autonomous driving division, where we analyzed how to learn more human-aligned reward functions using preferences from both a normative and descriptive lens. This summer I will be joining Dr. Katia Sycara’s lab, where I am studying emergent communication for multi-agent reinforcement learning. I hope to apply this work to improve an agents ability to cooperate with human teammates. I am very excited to conduct original research while learning more about robotics. I am exploring next steps and possible pathways, and I will be applying for a PhD program in fall 2023. I would like to thank the RISS program for giving me this amazing opportunity to work under top robotics researchers and meet like minded peers.