Organizers

• Hyemin Ahn (UNIST, Korea)

Hyemin Ahn(she/her) is currently an Assistant Professor of Artificial Intelligence Graduate School at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). Before joining UNIST, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Technical University of Munich in 2020, and at German Aerospace Center in 2021 (PI: Dongheui Lee). She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Computer Engineering at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea (advisor: Songhwai Oh). Before that, she received her Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Seoul National University. Her research interest is in machine learning-based human-robot interaction, vision and language perception, and motion generation.

 

• Sungjoon Choi (Korea University, Korea)

Sungjoon Choi is currently an Assistant Professor of Department of Artificial Intelligence at Korea University. Before joining Korea University, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Disney Research, Los Angeles, from 2018-2020 and a research scientist at Kakao Brain, Korea, in 2018. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Computer Engineering at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea, advised by Songhwai Oh. Before that, he received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Seoul National University. During his undergraduate years, He worked at Hanool Robotics in Bucheon, Korea, as a software engineer for three years. His research interests include, but are not limited to, the following areas: human-robot interaction (HRI), robotic applications from free-from text, and physically-plausible conditional motion synthesis.

 

• Joohyung Kim (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Joohyung Kim is currently an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on design and control for humanoid robots, systems for motion learning in robot hardware, and safe human-robot interaction. He received BSE and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from Seoul National University, Korea, in 2001 and 2012. He was a Research Scientist in Disney Research from 2013 to 2019. Prior to joining Disney, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University for the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2013. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Research Staff Member in Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Korea, developing biped walking controllers for humanoid robots.

 

• Katsu Yamane (Path Robotics, USA)

Dr. Katsu Yamane is a Principal Research Scientist at Path Robotics Inc. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering in 1997, 1999, and 2002 respectively from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Prior to joining Path Robotics in 2022, he held research scientist positions at Bosch Research North America, Honda Research Institute USA, and Disney Research, Pittsburgh. He was also an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, and a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. While his current research focuses on manipulation planning and control for manufacturing, he is still passionate about humanoid robot control and motion synthesis, physical human-robot interaction, character animation, and human motion simulation.