Dr. Laurel Riek is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, and also has appointments in the Department of Emergency MedicineContextual Robotics Institute, and Design Lab

Dr. Riek directs the Healthcare Robotics Lab, and leads research in human-robot teaming, assistive robotics, embodied AI, and health informatics, and builds intelligent systems which work proximately with people. Riek's current research projects have applications in acute care, neuro-rehabilitation, and home health. The lab is very interested in supporting health equity through community health efforts. 

Prof. Riek received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and B.S. in Logic and Computation from Carnegie Mellon University. Riek served as a Senior Artificial Intelligence Engineer and Roboticist at The MITRE Corporation from 2000-2008, working on learning and vision systems for robots. From 2011-2016 Prof. Riek held the Clare Boothe Luce chair in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame

Dr. Riek has received the NSF CAREER AwardAFOSR Young Investigator AwardQualcomm Research Award, and was named one of ASEE's 20 Faculty Under 40. Riek's research has been supported by the NSF, AFOSR, ONR, DOE, and a number of companies and foundations. 

Prof. Riek currently serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), ACM Transactions on Human Robot Interaction (THRI), and previously served as the HRI 2023 General Co-Chair and HRI 2020 Program Co-Chair. 
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