Joseph Giampapa is a Project Manager for the Intelligent Software Agents Lab of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Decision Systems at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. His primary research interests are in multi-agent systems, AI, and language technologies, which he augments with past commercial experiences in knowledge-based systems design and development, software engineering, project management, telecommunications and data networking, and intelligent tutoring systems.

Simon Baker is a Research Scientist in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he conducts research in Computer Vision. Before joining the Robotics Institute in September 1998, he was a Graduate Research Assistant at Columbia University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in the Department of Computer Science. He also spent a summer visiting the Vision Technology Group at Microsoft Research. He received an B.A. in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1991, an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1992, and an M.A. in Mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1995. His current research interests include, face analysis (recognition, tracking, model building, and resolution enhancement), 3D reconstruction and vision/graphics, vision theory, vision for automotive applications, and projector-camera systems. For more details of his research, see his webpage: http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/baker_simon.html.

Howie Choset (PhD, Mechanical Engineering, CalTech) is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University where he conducts research in motion planning and design of serpentine mechanisms, coverage path planning for de-mining and painting, mobile robot sensor based exploration of unknown spaces, and education with robotics. In 1997, the National Science Foundation awarded Choset its Career Award to develop motion planning strategies for arbitrarily shaped objects. In 1999, the Office of Naval Research started supporting Choset through its Young Investigator Program to develop strategies to search for land and sea mines. Recently, the MIT Technology Review elected Choset as one of its top 100 innovators in the world under 35. Choset directs the Undergraduate Robotics Minor at Carnegie Mellon and teaches an overview course on Robotics which uses series of custom developed Lego Labs to complement the course work. Professor Choset's students have won best paper awards at the RIA in 1999 and ICRA in 2003. Finally, Choset is a member of an urban search and rescue response team using robots with the Center for Robot Assisted Search and Rescue.

George Stetten earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill while holding a faculty position at Duke University in 1999, where he helped develop real-time 3D ultrasound. He obtained his M.D. from the SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse in 1991, an M.S. in Neurobiology/Computer Graphics from NYU in 1986, and an A.B in Engineering and Applied Physics from Harvard in 1976. Dr. Stetten wrote the software for the first computer system onboard Deep Submersible Alvin at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, designed a telemetric egg to study incubation of endangered birds at the Bronx Zoo, and conducted the first classroom in which laptop computers were linked with diffuse infrared light. He is currently an Associate Professor in Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh and a Research Scientist at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Reid Simmons is a Research Professor in the School of Computer at Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his B.A. degree in 1979 in Computer Science from SUNY at Buffalo, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 1983 and 1988, respectively, in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Since coming to Carnegie Mellon in 1988, his research has focused on developing self-reliant robots that can autonomously operate over extended periods of time in unknown, unstructured environments. This work involves issues of robot control architectures that combine deliberative and reactive control, probabilistic planning and reasoning, monitoring and fault detection, and robust indoor and outdoor navigation. More recently, Dr. Simmons has focused on the areas of coordination of multiple heterogeneous robots, human-robot social interaction, and formal verification of autonomous systems. Over the years, he has been involved in the development of over a dozen autonomous robots.

Yanxi Liu (PhD, Computer Science, University of Massachusetts at Amherst) is a Research Scientist in the Robotics Institute. Dr. Liu's research interests span a range of applications in computer vision and robotics, with a central research theme on learning semantically discriminative image features using statistical learning theory, information theory, computer vision, pattern recognition and image processing. Her current research in biomedical image analysis is focused on learning-based deformable registration of 3D volumetric radiology neuroimages; massive image feature creation and feature subset selection for discriminative subspace exploration; and novel human biometrics including facial asymmetry and gait signatures. Her research is aimed at medical image understanding using machine learning to complement medical experts in diagnosis and treatment of patients in a more effective and efficient way, and to enhance medical education. Under close collaborations with medical practitioners, applications of Dr. Liu's research include, but not limited to, semantic based large medical image database indexing and retrieval, cancer cell screening using hyper-spectral microscopic images, development of adaptive deformable registration techniques for segmentation of pediatric and elderly brains using statistical brain atlas, and MR image feature based analysis for classification and prediction of neuropsychiatric patients from healthy subjects. Dr. Liu has published widely in computer vision and robotics and served as a reviewer and panelist for many major journals and NIH research grant study groups.

Stephen Smith is a Research Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is director of the Intelligent Coordination and Logistics Laboratory. (ICLL). He received his M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1977 and 1980 respectively, and joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. Dr. Smith’s research focuses broadly on the development of next-generation software tools for complex planning, scheduling and coordination problems. His approach is rooted in constraint-based search and optimization; a now dominant paradigm for AI-based planning and scheduling that his research has helped to define. He has directed the development of several innovative planning and scheduling systems for various planning and logistics applications, including the AMC Allocator, a tool for day-to-day management of airlift and tanker aircraft and aircrews for the USAF Air Mobility Command (AMC) that is currently transitioning into operations within AMC’s Tanker/Airlift Control Center (TACC). Dr. Smith has authored or co-authored over 140 articles in the area of planning, scheduling and coordination of complex systems and organizations. Dr. Smith’s current research interests include constraint-based search algorithms and heuristics, mixed-initiative and collaborative planning and scheduling tools, re-configurable and self-organizing scheduling systems, and agent-based frameworks for distributed task and resource allocation.

Dr. Anthony Stentz is a Research Professor at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and Associate Director of the Robotics Institute's National Robotics Engineering Consortium. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989, his M.S. in computer science from CMU in 1984, and his B.S. in physics from Xavier University of Ohio in 1982. Dr. Stentz's research expertise includes unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned air vehicles, dynamic planning, multi-vehicle planning and coordination, perception for mobile vehicles, robot architecture, and artificial intelligence in the context of fieldworthy systems. He has transferred robotics technology to industry, by automating harvesting and spraying operations for agriculture, mass excavation for surface mining, continuous mining for underground mining, and inspection tasks for nuclear facilities. Dr. Stentz has served on the editorial board or program committee for ICRA, AAAI, IAS, SPIE, and IFAC. He has executed projects for DARPA, NASA, ARL, DOE, USBM, NSF, Caterpillar, Boeing, New Holland, Westinghouse, General Dynamics, Joy Mining Machinery, and Deere & Company. He has over one hundred journal articles, conference and workshop papers, books, technical reports, and patents to his credit. Dr. Stentz is a recipient of the 1997 Alan Newell Award for Research Excellence.

Illah R. Nourbakhsh (PhD, Computer Science, Stanford) is an Associate Professor of Robotics in The Robotics Institute. He is on leave for the 2004 calendar year and is at NASA/Ames Research Center serving as Robotics Group lead. He is co-founder of the Toy Robots Initiative at The Robotics Institute. His current research projects include educational and social robotics, electric wheelchair sensing devices, believable robot personalities, visual navigation and robot locomotion. His past research has included protein structure prediction under the GENOME project, software reuse, interleaving planning and execution and planning and scheduling algorithms. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory he was a member of the New Millenium Rapid Prototyping Team for the design of autonomous spacecraft. He is a founder and chief scientist of Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc. Illah recently authored the MIT Press textbook, Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots.

Cameron Riviere (PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins) is a Systems Scientist in The Robotics Institute. Dr. Riviere's research interests include neural networks, digital signal processing, and medical device design and surgical robots. His research focuses measurement of physiological tremor and tremor cancellation using robotic devices, as well minimally invasive approaches to beating heart surgery.

Alonzo Kelly (PhD, Robotics, Carnegie Mellon) is an Associate Research Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining CMU he executed robotics and automation related development projects for clients in space, nuclear, manufacturing, and resource industries solving problems in inspection, material handling, and computer integrated manufacturing. At Dr Kelly conducts basic research in mobile robot planning guidance and control in addition to application-oriented research at the National Robotics Engineering Consortium. Application oriented work in mobile robot guidance is targeted toward diverse applications including manufacturing and resource industry material handling, intelligent safety systems for man-driven vehicles, intelligent driving assistants for military applications, and motion planning algorithms for the Mars rover. Other research areas include the use of robotics technology and algorithms to automatically survey and/or generate maps of large areas like buildings or mines, the development of sensors which are suited to this task, and the use of robots in entertainment and marketing. Dr Kelly teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in mobile robot programming and design, and he is an active industrial lecturer on the topic of robotic technologies.

John Bares (PhD, Civil Engineering, Carnegie Mellon) is Associate Research Professor and Director of the National Robotics Engineering Consortium. The theme of his work is the synthesis of basic robotics technologies to create robust systems and the identification of appropriate target applications. His research focus is the full cycle conception to testing of intelligent machines for mining, construction, utility and agricultural applications. His objective is to design, build and test large forceful robotic systems that will evolve to be used in industry to solve tasks in complex, dynamic (i.e., changing) and dangerous environments. He is interested in robot system configuration, mechanism design, reliability and perception devices for outdoor environments. A specific interest is robotic system design and reliability and improving the processes of design, production and testing of prototype robotic systems to enable predictable levels of reliability. Research efforts he has led include automated volcanic exploration, automated surface and underground mining and the development of a variety of ranging sensors.

M. Bernardine Dias (PhD, Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University) is Special Research Faculty in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University where she conducts research in technology relevant to developing communities, multi-robot coordination, and autonomous navigation. In addition to her robotics research, Dr. Dias founded and directs the TechBridgeWorld initiative to facilitate state of the art research on technological innovations that benefit developing communities.

Steve DiAntonio is Director for Strategic Business Development at the National Robotics Engineering Consortium at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is responsible for obtaining sponsored research funding from industrial and government clients, setting the overall strategy for the NREC, and supporting technology transfer efforts. The NREC's research funding has increased threefold since Mr. DiAntonio joined the organization in 1999. He has a total of 19 years experience in senior sales, marketing and strategy positions for technology development organizations, software companies and electronics manufacturing companies. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from Harvard University.