Current Appointments & Affiliations
Adjunct Associate Professor in the Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs
·
2025 - Present
Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs,
Pratt School of Engineering
Recent Publications
Action-Dependent Optimality-Preserving Reward Shaping
Conference Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems Aamas · January 1, 2025 Recent RL research has utilized reward shaping-particularly complex shaping rewards such as intrinsic motivation (IM)-to encourage agent exploration in sparse-reward environments. While often effective, “reward hacking” can lead to the shaping reward being ... CiteA Digital Program to Promote Sexual Communication Between Early Adolescents and Parents: Development and Acceptability Testing Results
Journal Article Journal of Sex Research · January 1, 2025 Family communication about puberty, relationships, and sexuality is an important component of healthy sexual development for early adolescents who are beginning puberty and navigating increased interest in sexual and romantic relationships. Yet sexual comm ... Full text CiteMinding Motivation: The Effect of Intrinsic Motivation on Agent Behaviors
Conference Proceedings Aaai Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference Aiide · January 1, 2025 Games are challenging for Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents due to their reward sparsity, as rewards are only obtainable after long sequences of deliberate actions. Intrinsic Motivation (IM) methods—which introduce exploration rewards—are an effective sol ... Full text CiteEducation, Training & Certifications
North Carolina State University ·
2009
Ph.D.
North Carolina State University ·
2004
M.S.
Gujarat University (India) ·
2001
A.B.